


Among the Myths

by Meowlordfur



Series: Among the Myths [1]
Category: Hololive, Virtual Streamer Animated Characters
Genre: Eventual Romance, F/F, Friendship, Polyamory, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-01
Updated: 2021-03-09
Packaged: 2021-03-12 14:53:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 39,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29137377
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Meowlordfur/pseuds/Meowlordfur
Summary: Using her watch's ability to its fullest potential, Amelia Watson lived a luxurious life - a nice mansion with enough staff to run a small town, enough money to buy out several small countries, and the influence to do essentially whatever she wanted.That being said, joining Hololive certainly was NOT part of her plans. What even was a Hololive anyway?! An IDOL agency? Not only that, but an agency that apparently hired weird people dressed up as cats, dogs, and dragons? None of that stuff is really real, of course... Right?Alternatively: Amelia learns that she's a small fish in a massive ocean.
Relationships: Gawr Gura/Mori Calliope/Ninomae Ina'nis/Takanashi Kiara/Watson Amelia (hololive), Gawr Gura/Watson Amelia (hololive), Mori Calliope/Takanashi Kiara
Series: Among the Myths [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2161131
Comments: 59
Kudos: 283





	1. A not so Normal Day for a not so Normal Detective

**Among the Myths**

Amelia Watson had a Doctorate in Medical Science at the age of 26, graduating at the top of her class in some prestigious university, supposedly. Additionally, she was also a well-regarded detective, following in the footsteps of her great, great, great grandfather Charles Frederick Field, whose name was well known worldwide! Well, maybe he was, she wasn’t too sure of that to be honest. She’d have to look that up sometime later. All of that aside, she was pretty damn smart though, for real. Every single accomplishment she’d achieved through her own hard work!

Well, that and time travel, of course.

It was pretty easy to manipulate events into her favor with her trusty little watch. Her degree? A load of bullshit, she just needed it to be well respected by her peers. Her triple great grandfather? Simply a man she looked up online to travel back to and have him sign some official looking document. No one believed that it was really him at first, but his handwriting was indisputable, and she had TIME TRAVEL, she could collect whatever it was they wanted to prove it!

She lived a pretty great life to be honest. Using time travel, she was able to solve almost any case. With one simple lead, she could track down where the culprit had been, and typically was able to follow them prior to the committed crime and nail them shortly after. Granted, the annoying thing about this was that she’d have to lay low for a while until her present self went back in time, but afterwards, she’d set up and turn them right in.

Time travel was a bit complicated at times though, and she always had to make sure her deviation was always at zero. So, once she’d received her rewards and made sure everything was set up properly, she would then need to travel to the future down to the exact second she’d been in the past to reset the deviation to zero. For instance, if she were to travel to the past exactly twenty-four hours, then she’d have a negative twenty-four hour deviation. The only way to fix that would be, as stated before, to travel back to the future exactly twenty-four hours.

And now, here she was, her current deviation was at zero, allowing her watch to power down and recharge. She was sitting in her home office; at a mansion she’d purchased only a month before. The massive building was barely furnished, only her room, her office, and the staff’s own rooms had any real furniture in them. Even with furniture, the rooms were still not well lived in. Her office had her desk, sitting facing the door, a bookcase to her right, with only a handful of manga on it, and a large chair and lamp beside it. There was a large ugly carpet between her desk and the door, but it did very little to hide how incredibly empty the room felt. The only other real distinguishing feature of the room was the massive window behind her, showing off the immaculately detailed lawn, where several employees of hers were maintaining the lawn and bushes around the grounds. Her bedroom was little better, and she honestly wasn’t sure how the staff’s rooms looked.

She leaned back in her chair, and spun around a few times, letting out a breath of air. With that little performance out of the way, she leaned back forward on her desk, looking down at the paperwork. A case file was strewn on her desk. A series of jewel thefts on the East Coast of the United States over the course of several years, presumably by the same group of people, and the FBI wanted her help to find them. They knew she was the best at tracking down something like this. This would be simple for her. All she needed to do was camp out the most recently robbed store in the past, and then she’d follow them, just like she always did.

Before she could consider the how, when, and where of the case before her, the phone rang, and she glanced at it curiously. She had a secretary at her office she rarely visited anymore to answer all calls, so it was not exactly unusual for her to receive a home call, but it was unusual to receive one when she already had a case in progress. She shrugged, and picked it up, kicking her feet up onto the desk to get comfortable.

“Amelia Watson speaking.”

“Watson-san, hello!”

She blinked in confusion, noting the distinctly Japanese accent of the man’s tone. “Um, you’ve got me at a loss, who is this?”

There was a brief pause, and then a short intake of breath, “Ah, I see.”

“See what?”

The man on the other end of the phone seemed to snap out of whatever it was that had confused him, and resumed like nothing went wrong. “My name is Motoaki Tanigo, and you applied to Hololive three months ago, on the twenty-second of April. We’ve reviewed several hundred applications, and you’re one of the five we’ve chosen to represent our new international branch.”

“Um…Please give me a minute.” She set the phone down, and looked over to her computer to look up exactly what the hell ‘Hololive’ actually was. A few clicks later, and her jaw fell open in shock, “An idol group? The fuck?” Her shock and dismay increased tenfold when she looked up the streamers playing games – a streamer dressed up as a rabbit with an odd laugh, a girl dressed up as a dog, a cat, a fox, demons, angels… “What in the actual fuck?”

“Watson-san?”

Amelia glanced back at the phone she’d left alone for several minutes now, and she picked it back up, “I think there’s been a mistake here.”

“Is that so?” The voice sounded amused now, and Amelia felt her gaze narrowing at the tone, “I have a message here from your… sister… That I was told to read in case if you attempted to reject this offer.”

Amelia felt a headache coming. Her sister was a code she’d use for her future self. She did her best to hold in her annoyance and grounded out, “And what did she say?”

He coughed once to clear his throat and said, “Dear dumb little sister. You don’t have a choice. Do it.”

Amelia was speechless. Typically, when she left notes for herself, they at least gave her some idea of WHY she had to do what needed to be done. This though? What the fuck even was that?! And why was her future self always such a freaking bitch?! She breathed out through her nose and managed to say, “Ok… Fine… I guess I have no choice then.”

“Excellent, then if you’ll please just…”

Amelia followed along with the voice on the phone… apparently, she was going to have to get a streaming set up going, which involved getting a webcam, definitely a better computer, and a bunch of other things, and she was also directed to join the company’s discord server… The problem was that most of the chatter on that discord was in Japanese, and she wasn’t very well versed in any language except English.

After the rather lengthy phone call, where she’d been instructed in far too many things she was likely to forget, she just leaned back in her chair again, and let out a very loud sigh. How was joining an idol group going to help out in ANY investigation? Furthermore, why would her future self decide that was it necessary to do this? She didn’t typically mess around with herself in this kind of way, so it was a bit odd. She looked mournfully at the case file on her desk, and gathered up all of the documents and set them aside, before she got up and started to leave the room…

… She didn’t expect the door to slam open, and a small blue object to dart directly at her.

“WAH!!!!” She screamed seconds before being tackled to the ground, her head banging painfully against the carpet below her. She was seeing stars, and she tried to shake her head clear as she looked down at the… the girl? There was a girl dressed in a ridiculous shark costume hugging her, and even weirder was… A tail? There was a tail? What? How in the world did it look so lifelike? She let out a groan and allowed her head to fall back down, banging again against the floor.

“Ame!” The girl clutching her chest cheered.

“Um… Who are you?” Amelia asked, trying to sit up while having the slightly smaller girl clutching her so tightly.

The girl scoffed, “Yeah, very funny, Ame! It hasn’t been THAT long.” The girl mercifully let go of her chest, and sat up looking at Amelia with a wide smile of her own. Amelia noticed how captivating her blue eyes looked, but she shook the thought aside – there were more important things to think about.

“I think I’d remember some girl dressing up like a shark,” Amelia growled, “And how did you get in here? Why did the guards let you through?”

“Wha – what?” The girl sounded unsure now, “You gave me permission to come here… Look.” She dug through her sleeves, and pulled out a card, and Amelia had to hold in yet ANOTHER groan… This was her future self’s work again. The card gave clearance to people to pass through her gates unharmed, typically given to government officials, or other important figures. “And what was that about dressing up like a shark?” The girl questioned.

Amelia rubbed the back of her head, feeling a bump forming where she’d banged it against the ground, “Ok… When did we meet last?”

The girl across from her paused, looking genuinely confused now, and then her eyes widened, and her smile grew even more, “THIS IS OUR FIRST TIME MEETING?!” She screamed, and Amelia’s ears felt like they were going to bleed from how loud the girl was, “Oh my god!!!!”

“What?” Amelia let out in confusion.

“We’ve been running into each other for centuries!” She exclaimed, “And a few months ago you told me to join Hololive so we can finally work together!”

“Centuries?” Amelia felt her blood going cold. She’d never met another time traveler over the years, but considering she had the power, it was likely there were others capable of it too, “You can travel through time?”

The shark girl looked at her in consternation, her eyes narrowed in pure confusion, “What? How hard did you hit your head, Watson?”

“Stop talking to me like that! It’s the only thing that makes sense, you’re acting like we’re good friends, and talking about meeting up over the centuries!” She couldn’t quite hide her anger from the girl, and immediately felt bad when the girl shrunk back.

“Ah…” The girl’s shark tail, whatever the hell it was, fell to the ground, “I’m sorry…”

“No, no…” Amelia sighed, “Look… You’re clearly aware that I’m a time traveler, so… What exactly are you?”

“I can’t travel through time.” She explained, “Look…” She scratched her hair awkwardly, and shyly smiled, making Amelia’s heart skip a beat, “I’m Gura, I’m from Atlantis, and I’m over nine thousand years old. It’s nice to meet you.” She extended her hand out to Amelia, almost cautiously.

“Atlantis?” Amelia echoed, “Over nine thousand… What...?” She tentatively reached forward, and shook Gura’s hand, “Um… I’m Amelia, though you already appear to know that.”

Gura grinned happily, “Yep! Uh… I don’t know the rules of time travel very well, so I hope I didn’t mess anything up by revealing all of this to you…”

“It’s fine,” Amelia replied, “Time is predetermined, so what happens is what is supposed to happen.”

“Huh…” Gura shrugged, “Well, um, sorry for tackling you, is your head ok?”

“Yeah,” Amelia finally got off of the floor, and offered her hand to Gura, who gratefully accepted. She was shocked to see that the girl was shorter than even she was. Standing at just under five feet tall, Amelia would often hear people jeer about her height, so it was refreshing to see someone shorter, if even only a little bit more. “I’m fine, just… We’re friends, then?”

“Yeah,” Gura nodded.

“And you say you’re from Atlantis?” Amelia shook her head, “That… Doesn’t exist, right?”

“What…” Gura’s eyes widened comically large, “Are you serious?”

Amelia felt a flush creep up on her cheeks, “What? It IS ridiculous!”

“You can travel through time, but you can’t accept Atlantis?” She gaped at Amelia now, mouth opened wide in shock, and then a bit of mirth appeared in her eyes, and she shook with barely contained laughter, “Oh my god… You really are new to all of this, aren’t you?”

Amelia again felt a bit of anger rising, “Shut up!”

“Oh my god, I can’t wait until you meet everyone else we’re going to be working with! Let me guess, you thought all of the streamers in Hololive were just human girls dressing up as animals, right?” Gura let out a bark of laughter, and couldn’t suppress her smile, “Oh my god… This is going to be amazing!”

“I’m starting to wonder if you’re telling the truth about us being friends…” Amelia grumbled.

“Aw, don’t be like that. Let’s go grab something to eat, yeah? I’m starving!” Gura tossed her arm around Amelia’s shoulder, “Let’s go!”

“But…” Amelia looked back at the case she still had to solve.

“You can do that later!” Gura exclaimed, “You’re a time traveler, you’ve literally got all of the time in the world for that!”

Amelia sighed, that wasn’t quite true, but she didn’t really want to explain the mechanics of time travel to her right now. “Fine… Let’s head to the kitchen and see what my chef can cook up.”

“Aw yeah!” Gura cheered, practically dragging Amelia out the door.

Well… She wasn’t entirely sure what her future had in store, but it was definitely not going to be dull, if this was one of her new co-workers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok, so here's the first chapter of a story idea that has been bouncing in my head for the past two months. I have the next handful of chapters written, so I'll be posting them in the upcoming days.
> 
> I'm sure Amelia Watson not being a real detective and lying about her credentials will be a fairly unpopular idea. My thought process was that:  
> A) I can't write mysteries to save my life  
> B) I can't write a convincing detective character.  
> With those two thoughts in my head, my solution was to just to make her not an actual detective. 
> 
> A few more things to address: Polyamory - This will come into play later. These early chapters are essentially going to be the "meeting the cast" sort of chapters where Amelia gets over her fear of things she has little knowledge about. I LOVE the idea of all of them becoming super close to one another, and it's so rare to see it written about here.
> 
> One other thing I want to address is time travel: It doesn't make Amelia a god, and she can't do anything crazy with it. Later chapters go into further details, but essentially it works the same way it did in the third Harry Potter book: When she goes back and forward in time, she was ALWAYS supposed to do that, she's almost 100% incapable of changing anything. Furthermore, like it was explained in this chapter, in order for the time traveling device to keep working, it must be charged, and the only way it can be charged is if it's in the current user's relative present, and that is down to the EXACT second, a single second off, and it won't charge. What happens if it loses its charge when you're in the past or future? Future chapters will explain that in more detail.
> 
> Honestly, the Holo-EN fanfiction community here I feel can fit into two boxes pretty well (with a few exceptions):  
> 1) Porn with very little plot.  
> 2) Sad-as-hell stories that make you very sad by the end.
> 
> Don't get me wrong, I love the porn stuff (like seriously, some of it is REALLY well written!), and the sad angst stuff is typically ALSO well written, but by god, I want to read something happy once in a while! So my desire to see a less sad story led me to write this. I wanted to keep almost EVERYTHING intact: I want them in Hololive, and I want them to maintain their powers.
> 
> I know I'm not an amazing author. It has been well over a decade since I wrote and published any fanfiction, so I'm very, very rusty on things, but I wanted to throw my hat into the ring here. When it comes to romance, I don't know if I have EVER been that good at it, but I really want to give it a go, since I love this group of characters so much and want to see them all together.
> 
> Thanks for reading if you got this far, there won't be any more notes that are quite this long.


	2. What is this, some kind of Monster House?

**What is this, some kind of Monster House?**

Amelia Watson couldn’t stop her hands from shaking, even as she held the tea cup to her lips. Said cup was filled with green tea and a little splash of whiskey. Generally, she wasn’t one to drink during the day, or at all really, but today was proving to be one of those exceptional days. She was in her mansion’s gigantic dining room, sitting at a massive table situated in the middle of the room, atop the ugliest but most expensive carpet she’d ever had the misfortune of buying. In contrast to the giant table, the chairs were rather plain wooden chairs one would probably find in a dumpster somewhere. She meant to buy something super expensive at some point, but well, she mostly ate in her office anyway, so she didn’t really care. To the right side of the room were a series of large windows, spanning from the floor to the ceiling, and outside it was pouring rain – a fitting atmosphere. A few candles were lit on the table, though she wished she had a chandelier… Regardless, that thought was unimportant.

Oh, right, she was shaking. That was probably due to her guests, of course. Beside her was Gura, a nice shark girl who came from the mythical city of Atlantis, which by the way definitely existed. A few days ago, she would have laughed at anyone’s face for suggesting such a thing was real, but well, these past few days have been particularly enlightening. Fortunately, Gura was very easy to get along with, especially since the shorter girl seemed to know her fairly well, due to future Amelia’s adventures… Adventures which Amelia herself had absolutely no information about, so it wasn’t like she could go back and fulfil the opened time loops. She hated it when her future self didn’t give her details instructions on what to do or where to go…

She was trailing off again. She shook her head and downed the cup in one go. This was going to be a LONG day.

On the opposite end of the table sat three other individuals. The first was a quiet girl wearing the strangest outfit. She wasn’t even sure what it was supposed to be, some sort of cosplay? She would have questioned the girl about it, but her tentacles slithering around, coming out of her back made her keep her questions to herself. It didn’t help matters that her first introduction to the girl was the screams of terror of her staff that had answered the door when she arrived. At the very least, the girl seemed nice, she politely informed her that her name was Ina’nis… That was great and all, but Amelia wanted to stay as far away from her as possible, and had only politely nodded and allowed her to come into the dining room.

She looked at Ina warily, her eyes fixating on her… hair? It looked like hair, it started off purple, and then ended in weird orange tentacle things. What did they feel like? It was tempting to touch them, but another look at the girl’s much larger tentacles on her back, and she decided it was perhaps for the best that she kept the thought to herself.

Her eyes turned towards the girl sitting beside Ina. After inviting Ina in to the dining room, mere minutes later the air within the room turned several degrees colder, and Amelia, Gura, and Ina were treated to the sight of what looked like a portal appearing out of thin air, whisps of what Amelia could only describe as smoky terror incarnate came out from the portal first, and a tall woman with bright pink hair stepped out shortly after. What was most apparent, other than her black outfit with freaking SPIKES on the shoulders, was the massive Scythe she carried in her hands. The woman looked at the three of them with an unreadable expression on her face, and simply asked, “Is this Amelia’s house?”

“Uh, yes.” Amelia simply replied back.

And soon the girl took her seat at the table without any introductions. That suited Amelia just fine really… It at least gave her enough time to go into the kitchen and grab her whiskey while she left the mythical freaks on their own for a bit.

The third and final new visitor from that day arrived shortly after the pink haired woman, and Amelia nearly cried tears of joy when she answered the door (her staff from earlier had been given the rest of the week off and quadruple pay for the next month to stay quiet), and saw that while dressed in a particularly odd orange outfit, the girl appeared NORMAL! She had neat little feather earrings that were a wonderful shade of blue, and they almost looked like they were attached to her head.

“You can call me Kiara!” The girl had introduced herself, “I’m the current CEO of KFP and am a wonderful, majestic, and incredible Phoenix!”

Amelia nodded dumbly, feeling her heart shatter into pieces at the words.

And so here she found herself… In this desolate dining room, sitting at the table with four… people… Who she’d be streaming alongside for at least a year, according to her contract. Playing video games, singing, dancing, and essentially being an Idol was a major downgrade from her current job in terms of pay and – more importantly – her dignity, but well… It wasn’t like she had a choice. Her future self had for some reason deemed this extremely important, and she unfortunately had to go along with it and see it through.

That of course didn’t stop her from internally cussing her future self out, however.

“Calli! It has been far too long!” Kiara – the phoenix, Amelia reminded herself – latched onto death incarnate, and Amelia’s heart froze at the pure look of fury on the girl’s face as she turned to stare at her… uh… friend.

“Let go of me, Kusotori.” The girl grumbled, her horrifying expression losing some of its terrifying edge, “Do you always have to do this when we meet?”

“But we usually only meet when I die!” Kiara exclaimed, tightening her hold, “It’s so nice to see you coming to visit me for a change!”

“I’m not here to meet you,” Calli grumbled, not even struggling anymore. Amelia could completely sympathize and even relate to the absurdly resigned look on the girl’s face. “This is just for a job that death-sensei insisted that I participate in…”

“Death-sensei…?” Amelia mumbled out. Her heart thumped hard against her chest when the Reaper across from her glanced over – SHIT, she had said it too loud!

“His actual name is Thanatos, but you humans might know him as a Grim Reaper.” She replied, and Amelia shoulders slumped when she realized the girl wasn’t going to bisect her with her giant scythe.

“Huh…” Amelia nodded dumbly.

A rather awkward silence ensued afterwards, and Amelia had a bit of time to look around at her guests some more now that she wasn’t in a fit of panic. Gura was being extremely quiet, which was odd, considering the girl had been such a chatterbox the last few days. It seems she was fairly shy around people she didn’t know, and while it was certainly cute, Amelia reflected, it also meant that she wasn’t going to be able to help her ease their new companions into their new living arrangements.

Just the mere thought that she was going to let these people live in her house made her want to cry.

She shook her head, and looked over to Ina, who was awkwardly clasping her hands together. Her pointed ears twitching a little bit at the bickering between Kiara and the reaper beside her. She noticed Amelia’s stare, and shyly waved at her and smiled. Amelia returned the gesture, even if her heart truly wasn’t in it. With Kiara latched onto the Reaper – Calli, she recalled Kiara calling her – the only one who seemed to be a major extrovert was busy bickering, and that meant that no one was really willing to break the silence that took hold. Amelia sucked in a deep breath, let it out, and decided to take charge.

“We should really get back on topic.” Amelia called out to the two girls bickering. Her resolve crumbled once again when she noticed the sharp gaze of the terrifying pink haired girl looking towards her, but Kiara thankfully was a bit more receptive.

“Oh! Sorry!” Kiara laughed, and finally stopped harassing her co-worker, “You’re right! We need to talk about living arrangement!” She clapped her hands excitedly, “Ok, so first thing first, I think we should talk about the lack of furniture in here!”

“Um…” Amelia blinked owlishly at the girl.

“This is such a big building, but there’s NOTHING here! If I’m going to be living here, I’m going to need it to look like people live here, and not like it’s just some boring empty house!”

Amelia felt mildly insulted now.

“Like… Look at this ugly-ass carpet! Who picked this out??? It looks like someone just pissed all over the floor and called it art! Was this here when you bought this house Ame-chan? You should just throw it away!”

“H – Hey!” Amelia managed to get out, “That was really expensive!”

“And one more thing! Why is this table so big? I have to yell right now to talk to you! And candles?! What’s up with that, don’t you have a light we can turn on? Or at the very least a lamp? Trust me, I was around when candles were the only source of light, and it’s killer on your eyes! Electricity is the greatest invention of humanity, and so many humans treat it like a joke!”

“We did it first,” Gura felt the need to chip in, “Humans are way too primitive and dumb to accomplish something like that.”

Amelia felt a stab of betrayal at that. Was that casual speciesism? She looked over at Gura, not really sure how to feel about that, and the shorter girl let out a soft gasp at Amelia’s glance, and immediately backtracked.

“Not all humans are dumb!” Gura waved her hands apologetically, “You’re fine!”

That was hardly any better.

“Um… I’d appreciate it if you didn’t say things like that.” Ina interjected, “It’s not very nice. Not all humans are the same, we’re all different and extremely varied.”

“We…?” Amelia muttered, only to immediately slap a hand over her mouth when she realized she spoke the thought aloud again.

Ina glared towards Amelia, “Yes, we. I’m human.”

Amelia nodded quickly, “Oh… Yeah, right… But um…” She touched the tips of her own ears, “I… Don’t think… Humans have…”

Ina sighed, dropping her glare and rubbing her eyes tiredly, “I promise you that I’m human. Ignore the pointed ears and tentacles, they’re not important.”

Amelia internally disagreed… Those both seemed to be VERY important distinguishing features to her.

Gura went back to being silent, and Amelia could see a hint of shame on her face at the light telling off she’d received from Ina. Kiara was STILL going off about how shitty her house was, much to her chagrin, while Calli and Ina both seemed content to sit silently.

“Look, I give you full permission to decorate the damn house to your liking later.” Amelia cut through Kiara’s babble quickly, not realizing that she was going to regret saying that over the next few weeks. “Right! Now, why don’t we… I don’t know, introduce ourselves to each other?” She took a deep breath, “I’m Amelia Watson, the world’s most well-known detective, capturing some of the most elusive criminals to ever walk this planet!” She stood up, put her arms at her side and puffed out her chest proudly, waiting for the others to bask in her glory and exclaim how amazing that was.

“Yeah, ok.” Calli nodded, causing Amelia to deflate at the complete lack of awe and appreciation sent her way. “I’m Calliope Mori, I’m currently an apprentice to Death-sensei, and one day I will be the ruler of Death and the underworld.” She bowed slightly, before returning to her seat.

Ok, that sounded pretty impressive. Amelia nodded her head politely, remembering that she was in the presence of monsters, and promptly felt the fear that had been pushed back by her annoyances earlier make a full return. She coughed quietly into her hand, and took her seat, waiting for the next person to talk.

“I’m Kiara Takanashi!” The orange clad girl jumped up with a cheer, “I’ve lived for many millennia, watching humanity’s progress through time! I’ve fallen in love with them so much that I wanted to join them, and that’s why I’ve started my own restaurant chain that is now famous throughout the world, known for our incredible fried Phoenix!”

“Is… Is it real Phoenix?” Ina asked curiously.

“Pssh,” Kiara waved her hand dismissively, “O – of course it is!”

“Ugh…” Calli rolled her eyes, “Right…”

Kiara gasped loudly, turning to Calli quickly, and threw her arms around the Reaper, “Don’t worry Calli! I may love humanity, but you’re one true love! I could never love them as much as I love you!”

“Get off!” Calli cried in anger, “If I could kill you, I would’ve done so ages ago!”

Amelia faked a smile, and politely coughed, thanking whatever gods there probably were for allowing her to get away with interrupting monsters and not dying. “Um… Next, please?”

Ina nodded politely, and stood with her arms crossed in front of her. She bowed to the group, “My name is Ninomae Ina’nis, Um… I’m not quite as amazing as you three,” She laughed awkwardly, “But I love to draw, and I’ve done some professional works here and there… Please take care of me.”

Amelia eyed the girl’s tentacles again, and wondered if she should risk asking about them.

“What’s up with the tentacles?” Kiara asked curiously, she left Calli alone (much to the girl’s relief), and started to touch them, “Oh! They feel very nice and firm!”

“Just an accident,” She replied, “I found a book within some ruins one time, and the voice of the Ancient Ones told me that I am now their Priestess and that I have the entire fate of humanity in my hands, or some other such nonsense.” She chuckled at the thought, “Unfortunately, it changed me a little bit, but I promise I’m still human!”

She was hearing voices in her head? And fate… Of humanity…? Amelia felt her heart thumping in her chest again, and looking down longingly at her cup, wishing she had more tea. Actually screw tea, she wanted that whiskey!

There was another prolonged silence, where Amelia finally elbowed Gura, forcing the smaller shark girl to talk. “U – um…” Gura coughed, trying to buy some time. “I’m Gura… Gura Gawr.” She smiled clearly a little nervous, looking around the room at the group, “I’m from Atlantis.”

A simple introduction, but it was good enough. Amelia picked up the slack before it got too quiet again. “Alright… Now that that’s out of the way, I guess I should… Welcome you… Into my home.” She wasn’t quite able to hide the tremor that hindered her delivery, but she was thankful that none of the group seemed to notice, or at the very least, they didn’t care enough to comment. “I’ll be sure to provide you all the equipment you’ll need, and you’ll each get your own room… If you need something, just ask one of the staff around the house and they’ll help you, but uh… Please try not to scare them or anything.”

“Scare them?” Kiara couldn’t help but laugh at the notion, “Who, us? We’re the most unfrightening people ever!”

“Y – yeah…” Amelia looked towards Calli and Ina, before her gaze returned to Kiara, “I’m sure…”

“Right!” Calli stretched her arms and stood up, “So where’s my room? I can go back to the underworld really quick and grab a few things, and I’ll be back in a jiffy.”

XxXxXxX

Amelia collapsed into her office chair with a loud sigh, and kicked her feet up on the desk. With a loud groan, she leaned back and stared up at the ceiling. It was not even evening yet, but she already wanted to crawl into bed and never wake up. After making sure each of the monsters who’d be living with her were officially set up, she had come to her office to make sure her own set up was complete, and after verifying for the tenth time that it was properly done, the absolute absurdity of her situation had set in…

She liked playing games, sure, but she was typically so busy doing real work that it was usually something she’d put off for weeks before coming back and playing an hour or two, only to stop once again… Now, her future self had deemed this super important, and she was all but forced to do it… She groaned, and rubbed the palms of her hands into her eyes, upset and tired of her thoughts constantly wandering in the same circles they’ve been for the past few days.

A knock sounded on her door.

“Come in,” She called out, sitting up straight, and making sure her jacket wasn’t too messed up. It wouldn’t do for her staff to see her being so unkempt. They’d been uneasy these last few days with Gura hanging around, and now with the rest of the… “guests”, they were even more on edge. It would be counterproductive for them to see their employer also in such a bad mood… The least she could do was at least act a little confident.

So, it came as a bit of a surprise when instead of a maid, secretary, or some other member of staff walking in, it was instead one of her new co-workers.

“Sorry to bother you,” Ina smiled politely, and stepped into the room, “I’m sure you’re pretty busy right now.”

“N – Not at all…” Amelia sat up much straighter now and gave the thing her undivided attention. Of the four monsters living with her, Ina and Calliope were the two that frightened her the most. Gura was very friendly and easy to get along with – no doubt the shark girl’s past dealings with her future self helped in that regard – and Kiara was just so excited and friendly that was easy to let herself forget that she was actually supposedly a Phoenix. Ina and Calli though? One was quite literally working for Death, and the other was some sort of Eldritch Beast, especially when she was carrying around that book that just made Amelia’s skin crawl at the mere sight of it.

“I’d just like to talk for a moment, is that ok?” Ina asked, taking a few more tentative steps forward, her eyes locked firmly with Amelia. Her large tentacles were missing, and Amelia wondered if the girl was capable of summoning them at will.

Amelia hated the fact that she looked away seconds later, “Yeah, of course… Take a seat if you’d like. I – I could get a maid to bring you something to drink, I – if you’d like?”

“No, that’s quite alright.” Ina replied softly, but she did sit down a moment later. “Amelia…” The girl sounded hesitant, and Amelia risked another look. Ina looked pensive, her eyes focusing down to the floor one of her hands was rubbing her chin.

“Yes?” Amelia asked.

“Are you afraid of me?” Ina finally asked, looking up again, and Amelia made sure to quickly look away before their eyes locked again.

“Why do you ask?” Amelia evaded, she folded her hands together on the desk in front of her to prevent them from fidgeting too much, and she crossed her legs so she wouldn’t nervously start to tap her feet and unconsciously give herself away.

“Well…” Ina paused again. Amelia could practically feel her gaze upon her, and didn’t dare look up. “We’re going to be working together, so I would like to try and get along with all of my co-workers, and maybe try to be friends?”

That small uptilt at the end of Ina’s statement, making it into more of a question caught Amelia’s attention. If she didn’t know any better, she’d say that the thing across from her was nervous as well. “That’s fair enough,” Amelia replied.

“Yeah, but, you…” Ina swallowed, and finally seemed to have collected her thoughts, “Well… I mean, I know I can look kind of scary to people, but I thought you’d be ok with me coming here… I was informed that you were aware of… Matters like this.”

“About monsters and magic?” Amelia laughed bitterly, “You know, last week I wouldn’t have believed a single thing I’ve witnessed these last few days if someone told me about them. I was forced to work for a company that employs spirits, dragons, angels, and demons… And now I’m forced to let them live in my house, creatures and beings capable of destroying the world if they so pleased, or at least destroying the natural order of things.”

“Ah…” Ina let out a breath.

Amelia felt fear welling up in her now that she let that all out. Shit. Why’d she say all of that? Especially to one of the monsters that was actually capable of destroying the world, if what she said earlier was true. “Look, I’m –”

“Sorry.” Ina cut through Amelia’s own apology, and let out a shaky breath, “I didn’t mean to scare you earlier, or your staff… I just assumed that this place would be accommodating to my…” She shook her head, “To me.”

The hint of sadness in her voice was quite distinct, and Amelia involuntarily looked up at the girl at least, and saw a sad smile on her lips. Ina’s eyes were no longer on her, and were unfocused as she hugged her arms around herself. At that moment, she looked less like the monster that she pictured in her head, and more like a sad girl that was rejected… And if Amelia had to guess, she’d say this wasn’t the first time that Ina had faced fear like this before, if the sadness in her eyes was anything to go by.

Ugh… Here she went humanizing the thing… the person… no, the girl in front of her.

“I’m sorry,” Amelia sighed, rubbing her eyes tiredly, “I’ve been kind of a shitty host, but if you’re going to be living here, can I just be frank with you?”

“Y – Yes. Of course you can, please.” Ina nodded, her gaze returning to Amelia, and this time Amelia made sure to maintain eye contact.

“You mentioned something about the ‘Ancient Ones’ earlier when we were introducing ourselves… What is that? You said something about how it wants you to destroy the world, that honestly scares the fuck out of me.”

Ina held up her book, showing the cover to Amelia, “This here… I call her AO-chan.”

“Ow-chan?” Amelia intoned in confusion, “You named it?”

“It’s short for Ancient Ones,” Ina grinned, “I figured it’d be better to give her a shorter name since she’s small.”

“What…?” Amelia wasn’t sure, but she thought that that was an attempt at a joke.

“You know, cause she’s a book? And books are small?” She chuckled at Amelia incredulous look, but coughed into her hand to get back into her serious mode. “Anyway… This book apparently belonged to a Priestess hundreds, or maybe even thousands of years ago, and was lost to the passage of time. When I was on vacation with my family a while back, we were exploring some old ruins when I heard a voice calling me… And I found this book.”

“And it changed you?” Amelia asked.

“Yeah, I was scared at first, of course,” She shrugged helplessly, “Scared the crap out of my family too, especially when my ears changed and my hair…” She touched the orange bits of her hair, “Well, it didn’t really gel with me at first.”

“Oh my god…” Amelia couldn’t quite hide her startled laugh. That had been a particularly bad joke, but Ina sure looked proud.

“Anyway, yeah, I wasn’t happy. The tentacles scared the hell out of my mom and sister, but my dad was actually calm, said he knew some people who could help…” She shrugged, “Turns out that the Ancient Ones are a being beyond human understanding, and when a new Priestess is selected, what usually happens is that she goes mad upon the revelation of what she learns, and bad things usually happen…”

“Such as?” Amelia asked curiously.

“Well, usually bad things that kill a lot of people. Unfortunately for the Ancient Ones, for some reason I was able to keep my mind intact. I still hear their voices, but from what I was told from my dad’s ‘friends’, I am an anomaly that somehow is able to know about the revelations of the book, and also retain my sanity.” She grinned at that happily, “So as long as I live, there’s really nothing to be worried about.”

The sincerity, and not to mention her absolutely adorable smile actually helped, even if Amelia still felt a bit of trepidation. She sighed, and nodded her head, “That’s good to know.”

“So please,” Ina held her hands together in front of her, almost like a prayer. She looked at Amelia, almost pleading, “Don’t be afraid of me, I won’t hurt you, I promise.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Amelia rubbed the back of her head, “Honestly, the moment you started with the lame as hell jokes, I figured that you wouldn’t be a problem anyway.”

Ina clapped her hands together happily now, and she leaned back in her chair in relief, “That makes me happy to hear.”

“So… Is Calliope also a softie at heart too?” Amelia asked curiously.

“I’m sure she’s dying to talk to you too.”

“Ughhh….” Amelia bonked her head on the back of her chair, “Is this a thing with you?”

“Ina way, I guess it is.”

“You barely had to try for that one,” Amelia said, but she still had to suppressed a chuckle, “Look, you’ve convinced me that you’re not a horrible monster… At least for now, anyway. Is there anything else you need, or was that all you wanted to talk about?”

Ina paused, and nodded her head slowly, “Um, there is one more thing…” She looked at Amelia curiously, “We’ve met before, but you’ve been acting like we’re complete strangers… I played along with it because I thought there was a reason for it, but now… You don’t remember me, do you?”

Amelia sucked in a breath. Of course. Of fucking course. “That was…” Well, Gura was well aware, so might as well fill in Ina too, “My future self.” She replied, looking at Ina for a reaction.

“Oh!” Ina gasped, “You can travel through time?”

The fact that Ina bought into it immediately without any need to convince her actually made her feel incredibly uneasy, but she nodded her head anyway. “Yeah, the whole reason I’m joining Hololive is because my future self told me I had to do it.”

“Is that why your eyes aren’t glowing right now?” Ina asked.

“Uh, what?” Amelia blinked a few times at that, “No?”

“Oh…” Ina frowned, “But when I saw you last, your eyes were glowing bright blue, it looked like your eyes were on fire or something!”

“Um…” Amelia truly had no idea what to make of that.

“Oh!” Ina gasped again, covering her mouth, “Are you not supposed to know about your future?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Amelia replied, “Time doesn’t work like that. A lot of people think that time travel means that I can change everything the way I want, but things are already predetermined. If I go back and change something, it’s because I was supposed to do that… Uh, you know, this is kind of complicated, actually, can we put a pin in it?”

Ina nodded, “Ok, I should go make sure my computer is set up properly then.” She stood up, and Amelia went to stand as well.

She walked over to Ina, and shyly looked away, “Ina… I’m sorry for making you feel unwelcomed…”

Amelia was surprised when Ina hugged her, “It’s ok.”

She couldn’t quite hide the blush that appeared on her cheeks from the contact, nor could she hide it when Ina parted and smiled at her. Her blush exploded tenfold when the girl gave her a sly wink, and left her office.

“God damnit.” Amelia muttered, walking over to her desk and sitting down again. After she felt she could face the world again, she started to check her streaming equipment again, hoping that the next few days would be better.

… And what the hell was that about her eyes being on fire?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For examples for what past Priestess's did, I was going to use real world disasters from the past, but I thought that would be a little tasteless, so I just cut it out.
> 
> I was surprised at how well received the first chapter was. I've read all of the comments, and I just want to say I really appreciate them all.
> 
> I wanted to upload this chapter sooner, but I wanted to have a 3 chapter buffer before I went ahead and uploaded it.
> 
> See you next time.


	3. This Phoenix is so hot I'm going to melt, literally.

**This Phoenix is so hot I'm going to melt, literally.**

Amelia Watson turned off the stream, and with a large yawn, she fell forward, her forehead hitting her keyboard. Her computer made a lot of noises, and she was sure she’d probably hit some weird button here or there, but honestly, she’d been up for over twenty-four hours at this point making sure that all of her co-worker’s debut streams went off without a hitch, and then finally doing her own. Over the years she had some difficulty\ cases where she stayed up for several days in a row solving them (granted, most of that time was spent just waiting and trying to figure out when to time travel to, but that was just semantics), but after having to help the people she was working with now, none of those compared to how tired she felt.

She closed her eyes, ready to just fall asleep at her computer desk, when suddenly her office door was thrust open with a loud crash. Her heart felt like it did a hundred flips at once, and she shot up to her feet, only to trip and collapse to the floor. Letting out a groan, she looked up to see Kiara standing there, trying hard to hold in laughter.

“Ugh…” Amelia grunted, getting off the floor and to her feet, “Can I help you?”

“You certainly can!” Kiara exclaimed, “I want to stream a game now, and I want you to join me!”

Amelia gaped at the girl incomprehensibly, but finally shook her head, “Kiara, we just got done with our debuts. I haven’t slept for over a day, and I know you haven’t either!”

“A Phoenix has no need for sleep!” Kiara exclaimed, throwing a fist into the air, making some ridiculous action pose, “We have a job now, Ame-chan, and we need to do it to the best of our ability!”

“Ame-chan…?” Amelia mumbled, rubbing her eyes. No, no, that was the least of her concerns right now. “And I have a job outside of this, you know. I really need to get to sleep now so I can do it tomorrow before I fall too far behind.” Honestly, it had been a week since her new guests had all moved in, and she’d gotten practically nothing done in that time.

“Psh,” Kiara rolled her eyes, “Why do that job when you can do your fun job instead?”

“Because if I don’t do it, I won’t be able to afford this house? I won’t be able to pay my staff? Those seem like good reasons to me.” Amelia longingly thought of her bed, wishing Kiara would just leave.

Unfortunately, her wish was not granted this day.

“I own a fast-food chain! I’ll help pay for all of that, so take a break from your boring old detective work and help me out instead!” Kiara had lurched into the room and wrapped her arms around Amelia’s arm, and started dragging the detective out of the room.

“H – Hey!” Amelia cried, “You can’t just decide things like this for me!”

She was forcefully dragged out of her office, and had to shield her eyes briefly at the horribly gaudy and eye destroying orange carpeting Kiara had picked for the hallway. It was so bright that she could have sworn it was shining at them. The walls were adorned with painting that just looked like a bunch of fanart that Kiara really liked and printed up, and as far as Amelia could tell, it was just pictures of the other Hololive members. The most common being Pekora, who Amelia learned a while ago was Kiara’s favorite of their senpai.

Her thoughts were interrupted when Kiara took a turn down from the hallway containing Amelia’s room and office, and into one labeled the guest hallway, where four doors were, two on either side, and at the end of the hallway was a massive window with a small table in front with a vase and some flowers Gura picked out. On the left side of the hallway were Ina and Calli’s rooms, easy to tell apart since Kiara in her infinite wisdom decided to have their doors painted in their “official” colors. Purple for Ina, and Pink for Calli. Across from those two doors were Gura and Kiara’s, blue and orange respectively, and it was through that orange door that Amelia was taken into.

“Oh my god,” Amelia gasped upon stepping into the room, “What’s the temperature in here?”

“I have it set to thirty,” Kiara replied, finally letting go of Amelia’s arm and going over to her computer, “You guys like it way too cold!”

Thirty? Oh, right, Celsius. what was that in Fahrenheit? like a million degrees? “Maybe put some different clothes on, then?” Amelia replied, looking at the miniskirt and top that exposed her belly, “You’d probably be warmer.”

“I couldn’t do that!” Kiara gasped, “This is my official uniform!”

“What? Since when?” Amelia asked. She’d seen the restaurant in town, and she was sure she’d have done a double take if she’d seen some poor teenagers or twenty-somethings out and about wearing that.

“Well, it will be!” Kiara nodded her head, “I have to lead by example!”

“Are the boys going to have to wear it too?”

“Well of course! At KFP we’re all about equality!”

“Yeah… Have fun getting anyone, man or woman, to wear that.” Amelia shook her head, and took off her hat and coat, she could already feel the sweat on her brow, and she knew before she was done in here, she was probably going to have to shower before bed.

Kiara’s room was large, but then again, so were all of the rooms in this building to be honest. The Phoenix had an absolutely massive bed (Amelia balked at the giant comforter on it, how in the world could Kiara even THINK of sleeping with that when it was so hot in here?!) shoved to the corner on the room, with a dresser that looked absolutely overstuffed. There were two doors off to the side, one leading to the girl’s personal bathroom, and one leading to a walk-in closet, and from what Amelia could see, it was already overloaded as well. Along the wall of the room near her bed, sat her computer sitting on a desk, with two seats and enough room for several people to sit.

“I’ll just pay them more to wear it, it’ll be fine, Ame-chan, you worry too much!” Kiara went over and sat at her computer, and beckoned Amelia over. With escape looking impossible, Amelia rolled her eyes and followed Kiara over, and took the seat next to her.

“So… Why don’t you get Calli for this?”

“I tried, but she said she was busy!” Kiara huffed, “Said something about having to go work overtime or something, and then she just left!”

Amelia nodded slowly. Overtime as in… Reaping souls? Eh, maybe it was best that she didn’t think too hard about it. She shook the thought away, and looked towards the monitor, “So… What are we going to play?”

“Hm… Good question…”

Ame couldn’t quite hide her groan.

Eventually Kiara did decide on a game, and tossed Amelia one of the controllers, and despite how tired she felt, Amelia would be lying if she said she didn’t have any fun. Thankfully, Kiara’s yells kept her awake despite her body’s desire to shut down.

“Let’s make this interesting!” Kiara exclaimed, her character on the screen managing to knock Amelia’s character off the building, “HAH!”

“How?”

“Every time one of us loses, we need to take off some clothes.”

“Fuck no!” Amelia denied immediately, feeling her cheeks flush, “You know we’re live, right?!”

Sure enough, the chat was going absolutely crazy, and Amelia was shocked at the number of viewers who were watching. Why in the world would thirty thousand people want to watch two girls playing awfully at a game like this? Didn’t they have something better to do?

“Aw, you’re no fun, Ame-chan! I bet you’d look really good!” She suggestively raised a brow and gave the blonde a wink, and if Amelia’s face felt warm before, it was nothing like how it felt now.

She really hoped none of her staff or colleagues ever saw this footage.

“Aren’t you with Calliope?” Amelia managed to fire back despite how she felt.

“I love Calli!” Kiara exclaimed, “But it’s ok to have multiple girlfriends! Humans have been doing it for centuries!”

“Kiara!” Amelia gasped in shocked, “No! Bad! Polygamy is illegal!”

Kiara couldn’t hold it in any longer and started to laugh, and it didn’t take Amelia very long to realize that the Phoenix had been messing with her the entire time. Again, her face warmed up in embarrassment, and she took a quick look at the chat to see it zooming once again. “You know for a detective you were pretty slow right there!” Kiara continued to laugh, not even noticing Amelia go very still.

“Heh…” Amelia swallowed, her throat feeling suddenly dry, “Yeah… Sorry, I’m just tired.”

Thank god she had that excuse to fall back on right now.

“But I’m serious when I said you’d look good, you are pretty cute.”

Amelia groaned, “You can stop joking around now, Kiara…”

“No, no, that wasn’t a joke, I’m serious.”

“Ugh…” Amelia did her best to hide her face behind her hands.

After that bout of teasing making Amelia wish she had been swallowed up by the Earth, Kiara mercifully let up and allowed them to go back to the game. Amelia had to admit though that Kiara was pretty cute – granted, the fact that she was a Phoenix that lived forever kind of put a damper on things, not to mention the girl liked Calliope – arguably the most terrifying person Amelia had ever met in her life – and if Calli had even an inkling of feeling towards Kiara, she certainly didn’t want to get in between them.

“So… What’s it like being a Phoenix?” Amelia asked after another few rounds.

“Hm?” Kiara paused in thought, “Well… I don’t know how to explain it, I’ve never not been a Phoenix.”

Amelia nodded – fair enough – but she pressed on, “Well… Your room is hot as hell… Are you just naturally warm all the time?”

Kiara reached over and gripped Amelia’s wrist, and she immediately got her answer. Kiara was warm, but not extremely so. Her skin actually felt very pleasant, and if the room itself wasn’t at an extremely high temperature, then she actually wouldn’t have minded if Kiara kept holding on.

“How come you look human?”

“It’s because of this!” Kiara jumped up, and Amelia scrambled to pause the game as she looked over, and her face nearly exploded in red when she noticed Kiara’s hands hovering over the strangely designed belt buckle she was wearing. Was she seriously going to take her pants off?!

“If I take this off I turn into a Phoenix!” Kiara explained, “But uh, I won’t do it in here. I don’t want to burn your house down.”

“Or me…” Amelia mumbled.

“Oh don’t worry! My fires don’t harm people I care about!” Kiara quickly assured Amelia with a smile, “You’d be fine.”

“Uh, care about?” Amelia wished she could stop blushing so much, but it was difficult. Kiara was just so damn earnest and open with everything she did and said.

“Well yeah, you’re letting us live here, and you seem nice enough.”

A quick bout of shame welled through Amelia at the statement. She’d not really interacted much with ANY of the girls lately due to her fears. Despite all of that though, despite the fact that she viewed Kiara as a monster, the girl still trusted her this much? It was almost humbling.

“Th – Thanks…” Amelia muttered, unable to quite hide her stutter, hopefully Kiara didn’t catch that…

… Aw shit, she did. Kiara gave a cheeky little laugh, and gave Amelia’s head a pat, much like a dog. “You’re too cute!”

“Stop it…” Amelia whined, forcing Kiara’s hand away, “L – Let’s just finish up so I can go to bed… And shut up chat!” She glared at the chat going by a mile a minute, seeing stupid messages about tee-tee, yuri, and other stupid things.

Thankfully the rest of the matches went by without much of an incident, and after nearly two hours, Kiara decided to end the stream. Amelia was definitely thankful, because she felt sweat everywhere… That offer to strip a piece of clothing for each loss that Kiara joked about earlier was honestly looking extremely appealing right now.

“See you all next time!”

“Buh-bye!” Amelia quickly intoned, and after the stream was over and they weren’t being recorded anymore, Amelia let out a groan.

“That was fun! Let’s do it again!”

Amelia wasn’t expecting the Phoenix to hug her, nor how damn HOT it was going to be. She was already very warm, but with the Phoenix’s unusually high body heat latching onto her, she felt like she was going to melt. Despite that, she forced herself to give the girl a few quick pats on the back, and they soon parted.

“Yeah… Just next time, can we do this in my office? Wear a sweater if you have to, but I’m seriously burning up in here.”

Kiara’s usual response made an expected reappearance – her interesting laughter. Honestly, Amelia did have to admit that it sounded odd, but it was endearingly weird. Well, maybe she didn’t think it was so cute, and she was starting to go a bit delirious due to the heat. She wasn’t very sure at this point.

“Alright, fine. You humans are so nitpicky about this kind of stuff!” She led Amelia over to the door, and the breeze that flew into the room when the heat rushed out was honestly one of the most heavenly feelings Amelia had ever experienced in her twenty-some-odd years of life.

“Well, uh, thank you for inviting me.”

“It was nothing.” Kiara handed Amelia her coat, “I should be thanking you for letting me live here.”

Amelia accepted her clothes, and smiled back at the Phoenix, “Eh, it’s fine.” God this was getting awkward. She didn’t actually know how to end a conversation very well. She awkwardly scratched the back of her head instead and looked down the hall. “S – See you around, then.”

“Bye, Ame-chan! Don’t be a stranger!” Kiara thankfully made it so Amelia didn’t have to think too much longer, and instead retreated back into her room.

As she walked back to her room, dreaming about showers, Amelia did what she did best: overthink things.

Gura, Ina, and Kiara were all friendly, and she no longer felt too apprehensive towards them. That only left the terrifying incarnation of death left… Ok… She should ask for a collaboration with her, since that is part of her job and all now… But maybe she should do it tomorrow… Calliope had a giant scythe, and she was probably going to be cranky after work, so better not get on her bad side and end up accidentally dead or something equally as awful.

… Yeah… Tomorrow sounded good.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The length of chapters is going to vary pretty massively, some of the future chapters I have written are close to 10k words, while others are only around 2k words. It all depends on how much mileage I can get out of an idea.
> 
> Thank you for reading!


	4. Death is actually pretty cute, I guess...

**Death is actually pretty cute, I guess...**

Amelia stood in front of Calliope’s door, staring at the pink painted wood in consternation, her lips drawn into a large frown. The Grim Reaper’s apprentice was someone that frightened the hell out of her, and outside of the first day of her arrival, Amelia really didn’t have any other real interactions with her other than managing her stream during her debut yesterday. Prior to that, the reaper was honestly not at the mansion very often, usually out doing her own jobs and duties, and until this day, that suited Amelia just fine. Calliope had a nasty habit of carrying her scythe everywhere she went, and as a result, Amelia often heard her staff’s horrified screams…

She was thinking too much again. She growled, gripped the rim of her hat and straightened it, before she gathered up all of her courage to lift her hand. Her knuckled hand hovered just above the door, and she finally grit her teeth and knocked on death’s door… literally, she supposed.

“Hold on!” She heard on the other side, surprising her by how normal it sounded. What was she, Calli’s mother coming to check up on her?!

“T – take your time.” Amelia called out, hoping her voice wouldn’t crack.

It took a good minute before she finally heard Calliope unlock her door, and there stood the woman of her nightmares. She wasn’t quite glaring, but Amelia could tell that she was annoyed, and probably wondering why she decided to come unannounced and knock on her door – a question that Amelia was asking herself now.

“What do you want?” Calli asked after a prolonged moment of silence.

“Um…” Amelia wasn’t entirely sure what to say. She wanted to collab with the reaper in some capacity just moments before, get to know her like the rest of the people living here now, but… She was a freaking reaper!

Calliope sighed and opened her door a bit more and moved aside, “Look… I don’t have all day, do you want to come in and talk to me or something? I’m a bit busy here.”

“Doing what?”

If she was reaping people in her mansion, then reaper or not, Amelia was going to have to put an immediate stop to that… Maybe.

“Making music.” Calliope answered, walking over to her computer set up, she had four monitors, and all around the computer desk was a bunch of bizarre toys, instruments, and even cooking utensils.

Amelia eyed the room curiously, and was actually a bit disappointed by what she saw. There weren’t any coffins or corpses, nor were there racks of scythes or other various weapons. She had a normal bed, a normal dresser, a normal… everything. Honestly, if it wasn’t for the fact that Calliope was dressed like a metalhead and had a massive scythe just laying on her bed, she wouldn’t have even suspected this room to belong to a supernatural being.

She snapped out of her rumination, and forced herself to ask, “What kind of music does a reaper enjoy?”

Calliope raised an unimpressed brow at that, “You know, we used to be human too.”

“Oh uh…”

“It’s cool,” Calliope rolled her eyes and turned back to her computer, “To your kind I imagine agents of death like us come across as inhuman monsters.”

Amelia couldn’t help but flinch at that. It didn’t help that that was exactly what she thought of the girl sitting before her. After talking to Ina, Kiara, and Gura though, she was starting to realize just how incredibly short-sighted and ridiculous her thoughts were. She at least worked up enough courage to muttered, “S – Sorry…”

“Like I said, it’s cool.” She spun on her computer chair towards Amelia, “But really, what do you want?”

“W – Well…” Amelia coughed into her hand trying to buy time, and then immediately felt dumb for doing that. “L – Let’s collab together!”

“A collab?”

“U – um…” Calli’s stare was making her sweat bullets now. “You know what? Maybe this -”

“Sure.” Calli shrugged, “That’s cool with me.”

“Oh…” Amelia blinked, “Uh… Good!”

There was another prolonged and awkward silence, and Amelia felt the need to somehow break it, but she had never been a social animal. The reaper was again staring at her, and that sweat on her back was becoming more of a disgusting waterfall now.

“Guh…” Calli stood up, causing Amelia to let out a startled yelp. The reaper rolled her eyes, and walked over to the side of her bed, where there was a minifridge that Amelia had failed to notice – so much for being a detective. “You want a drink?”

“Um…”

“I got some cheap ass wine in here,” Calli lifted up a bottle, and Amelia could see that was a black bottle of Red Wine, and the reaper gave it a little bit of a shake. “It looks like you could afford to loosen up a bit.”

“S – Sure…” Amelia watched Calli grab two of the wine glasses on top of her fridge, and she poured two glasses, bringing both of them plus the bottle over to her computer desk. In the meantime, she sat down on the other available chair at the desk. “Uh… Why is your fridge over there?”

“Not enough room on my power cord over here,” Calli answered, sitting down at her desk and handing Amelia one of the glasses, “It’s a pain in the ass being over there, but at least it gives me a little bit of exercise.”

“Ah.” Amelia nodded slowly, “I see.”

She looked down at the offered drink, and after a mere moment’s hesitation, she downed it all in one go. It was shitty wine, but getting drunk sounded absolutely amazing right now. Granted, just one glass wasn’t going to do it for her. She held out her glass expectantly towards Calliope, not noticing the reaper blinking in surprise.

“Not a social drinker, then?” Calliope muttered, “You know if you want to get shitfaced, I have some whiskey instead.”

“That would be nice.” Amelia admitted.

“Look… Not that I’m opposed to drinking like this, but shouldn’t we work out the details about our collab?”

“Y – yeah…”

“Ok, stop.” Calliope slammed her hand on her computer desk, causing the bottle of wine to shake precariously, mere seconds away from tipping over. Fortunately, Calliope caught her error and quickly snatched it before it fell. Holding it like a precious treasure, she hugged it to her chest, “Oh, I’m sorry…” She cooed to the bottle.

It was almost surreal to see someone she associated with her nightmares doing something so strange.

“Right… Amelia.” Calli gently placed the bottle of red wine back on her desk, and turned to face the detective fully. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

“What makes you th – think I’m worried about that?” Amelia asked, with a slightly high pitch laugh.

“I’m not an idiot, Amelia. You’re terrified of me. Like I said, I get it. I work with death, I’m the one who guides souls to the underworld and reap them for my sensei.” She paused, and took a sip of her drink, “But I do not kill people. They have to die first before I can do anything. It’s a dumb misconception people have about us.”

“Oh…” Amelia muttered.

“Yeah, people get mad that their loved one dies, they place blame wherever they can, and they put it on us.” Calliope clicked her tongue in annoyance, “And now there’s so much propaganda out there about us that I can’t go anywhere without people looking at me like that.” She pointed at Amelia, “So please, please, stop thinking I am going to hurt you, I promise I won’t.”

“Then what’s with the get up?!” Amelia cried, “You have freaking SPIKES on your shoulders! You have a god damn giant SCYTHE! If you didn’t dress like that and look like you were pissed all of the time, people wouldn’t assume!”

Amelia was surprised by her outburst, and it slowly dawned on her that she had yelled at the apprentice of the grim reaper. Granted, she did just claim that she didn’t kill people, but that glare that was directed at her was certainly close to making her pass out in terror.

“What was that?” Calliope whispered.

“U – Um…”

This was it. She was going to die. She never wrote a will, so she didn’t know where her assets were going to go, but she didn’t care anymore.

Calliope let out a short laugh, and her face morphed from terror incarnate to something infinitely more pleasant. She grinned, and punched Amelia lightly on the shoulder, “I’m just fucking with you. Trust me, enough of us have bitched to sensei about the dress code, but he loves the style and refuses to change it.”

“Huh…”

“You’re alright, Watson.” Calliope took another drink of her wine, “Want me to get the whiskey?”

“Yes, please.”

XxXxXxX

Who knew the Grim Reaper’s apprentice would be such a cool person? Amelia certainly didn’t. Hell, right now, she would frankly say she didn’t know a whole lot. It was very hard to focus on much of anything, especially with the room waving as much as it was. Was she on a boat? No… But she made sure to mention it Calli, who ruefully shook her head at Amelia’s absolutely hilarious joke.

“Amelia,” Calliope held the girl’s shoulder, steadying her, “Are you ok?”

“Psssh! I’m fine!” Amelia replied.

“Right.” Calliope nodded sagely, and discreetly made sure to push aside Amelia’s glass while the blonde wasn’t paying attention. Granted, it wasn’t truly necessary, since it seemed the detective wasn’t really paying attention to anything at the moment.

“So, so, so!” Amelia nearly fell forward, but Calli quickly reached over and put a hand on her shoulder, “Our collab! We should play a game for it.”

“Yes…” Calliope nodded slowly, “I kind of figured that is what you wanted to do in the first place. Though…” She looked thoughtful now, “We could do a song collab too if you want.”

“No!” Amelia shouted, “I can’t sing!”

“Yeah… I think it’s time for you to go take a nap.” Calliope muttered, rubbing her ears when Amelia’s head started to lull to one side, “Come on…”

“N – Not yet!” Amelia exclaimed, “Calli!”

“Yes?”

“Kiara told me to do this!”

Amelia completely missed the way Calliope’s face darkened, and didn’t even register the girl’s hand tightening on her shoulder. There was a short shuddering breath, and Calliope managed to say, “She did, huh.”

“Yeah, said you were nicer than I thought.” Amelia bobbed her head up and down, “Turns out she was right!”

Calli let out a deep breath, and her hand loosened on Amelia’s shoulder. “Yeah… She would say that…” She wistfully looked away, not that Amelia noticed. Calliope looked over to her bed, and noticed a box below, and her eyes widened, “Oh, um… Amelia, there’s something I wanted to ask you.”

The topic was changed about as subtly as a brick to the face, but fortunately Amelia was a tad too intoxicated to really care.

“Yeah?” Amelia tilted her head and nearly fell right off her chair, “What is it?”

“I found this box in my closet when I was cleaning it.” She got up, hesitantly removing her hand from Amelia’s shoulder. When she was sure Amelia wasn’t about to collapse, she went over to her bed, and knelt down and pulled out a small cardboard box from underneath it. She walked back to Amelia and set it on the desk.

“For me?”

“It IS yours!” Calliope resisted the urge to slap her forehead.

“Oh.” Amelia looked at the box, and managed to open it, “What’s in h -”

Calliope’s brow rose when she noticed Amelia immediately go silent, and she peered into the box to see what made Amelia stop talking so suddenly. Upon seeing it though, she couldn’t help but wince. There was a dog collar and what looked to be dozens of photos of some dogs and even a cat. The fact that they were physical photos, fit to be in a frame proved just how important these must have been to her.

And given how Amelia immediately froze up, Calliope had a damn good idea of why they were in that box.

“Amelia?” Calliope whispered, “You there?”

Amelia roughly closed the box and shoved it away from her, “Yeah, I’m fine.”

A clear lie, made even more obvious by how drunk the girl was. She couldn’t hide her grief, and looked seconds away from crying. Her eyes were shining, and she quickly reached up and wiped her eyes. Regret immediately filled Calli – she didn’t mean to hurt her like this. “I’m sorry, Amelia.”

“Did you take them?” Amelia asked suddenly, though she was still look away from Calli.

“Take them?”

“W – with the scythe…” Amelia shakily pointed to her bed, where the weapon of choice lie.

Realization hit her then – so that was what Amelia was asking. “I don’t deal with animals.” Calliope answered, “I only tend to the human souls who’ve… passed on. There’s so many living beings on the planet that we have to organize who reaps what…”

“Ah…” Amelia muttered.

“I can ask around though… If you want me to anyway…” Calliope spoke again, wincing at the dejected tone in Amelia’s voice, “It might take a while though… It… It would help if you… gave me some details.”

“Six years ago…” Amelia sighed, “They all went missing six years ago.”

“Missing?” Calli blinked in surprise, and all three of them at once?

“Yeah… One night they all just disappeared. Bubba, Mikki, and Wellington were their names.”

Calli didn’t dare mention the fact that names for pets wasn’t very helpful. It was a purely human concept after all. Usually, the best way to identify animals was by scent. That wasn’t her jurisdiction though, as she said before, she dealt primarily with humans.

“Ok, I’ll look into it,” Calli gently pat Amelia’s shoulder, “Do you want me to keep this box in my room?”

Amelia nodded.

“Alright.” Calli gently moved the box away, “Then… Is there anything else I can do for you?”

“No.” Amelia stood up, “W – We can go over the details later for the collab.” Amelia stumbled in place before finding her balance. Calli got up and made sure to follow Amelia out of her room, making sure the drunk girl wasn’t going to hurt herself. At the door, Amelia stopped, and gave Calli a small smile, “You’re pretty nice, Calli… I’m sorry for being so scared…”

“It’s cool,” Calliope muttered, “Like I said, it happens all the time.”

Amelia nodded, and opened the door.

“And Amelia…” The detective stopped leaving for a moment. “I’ll find out what happened to them… Don’t worry.”

Amelia didn’t trust herself to answer aloud, so she just nodded.

She was glad she was drunk. Sleep would come quickly, and that meant less time thinking about things she wished to forget.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So Calliope originally being human goes directly against her lore, but it's something that will be expanded upon later.
> 
> Also, this is the last of the 'Amelia is terrified of her new roommates' chapters! She's met and talked to all of them, and I can now finally have her start to get along with them!
> 
> This chapter took a while to come out because I was busy writing the next chapter that continues the whole 'pet' thing from this chapter (next chapter is significantly longer, too). It gets VERY weird, and I'm not satisfied with it, but I finally decided that I should just stick with it, otherwise it's never coming.
> 
> On the plus side, other than re-reading it another hundred times to edit it until I come to loathe even looking at it, the next chapter is pretty much done, and the chapter after that is roughly 80% done as well. I'll still stagger the release of chapters because I'm trying to reach my buffer of 3 chapters mentioned in a previous note, but we'll see what happens.


	5. Emotional Support is Very Important!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is by far the longest chapter of the story so far, sorry for the delay. Not entirely happy with it, but whatever, it needs to happen to get to better stuff later on.

**Emotional Support is Very Important!**

At the stove, a small Atlantean shark girl was cooking some scrambled eggs for herself and Amelia, concentrating as she mixed the eggs and added in some onion and some bits of ham. The early morning light filtered in through the curtained windows, bathing the kitchen in a nice and comfortable glow. The only sound was the eggs as they slowly cooked, and the toaster as the toast popped in that moment. She quickly went over to the toast and set it aside on a plate, eyeing the butter, mentally reminding herself to butter the toast momentarily.

It had taken quite a while for her to convince the cooking staff to actually let her cook her own meals, especially since they seemed to treat her like a kid! She was close to a hundred times their age! What was even more infuriatingly insulting was how they treated the other members of the household. They were completely afraid of Ina and Calliope (granted, their fear was slowly waning, and she even caught Ina in an in-depth conversation with a few of them before), and they all seemed to absolutely love Kiara – which Gura begrudgingly admitted to seeing why, Kiara was an absolute sweetheart. When it came to her though? The shark girl with pointed teeth capable of tearing through flesh like a knife through butter, the girl who carried a trident that could piercing even the strongest of metals, the girl who was significantly stronger than any damn human! Instead, they would pet her head and tell her that she was a good girl…

… It felt nice to be appreciated and liked, but she was an ADULT god damnit!

“Gura? You’re cooking again?”

Gura glanced over her shoulder at Amelia already fully dressed, and her brow creased in worry. She’d been living with the time traveling detective for only a few weeks, but she felt that she had gotten to know Amelia pretty well in that time, and one thing she learned was that Amelia never woke up early, and seeing her up before noon was quickly becoming a myth. So, it was pretty disconcerting to see Amelia up and about so early.

This started a few days ago, Gura recalled, when Amelia got absolutely sloshed, and she overheard Kiara chastising Calliope for getting her so drunk. That in itself wasn’t too noteworthy – Gura herself had gotten drunk more than a few times, the only thing she truly worried about at that time was how bad Amelia’s hangover was going to be – but the following day Amelia woke up early, and just sat at the dining room’s massive table by herself, just being incredibly quiet.

That was when Amelia learned Gura liked to cook her own meals, when she’d been heading to the kitchen, she noticed Amelia and walked over.

“What are you doing?” She had asked.

“Thinking…” Was Amelia’s reply, though the blonde did look up, and Gura felt a stab of worry run through her when she saw how exhausted the poor girl looked. At the time, she just thought it was a hangover, and offered to cook Amelia a meal to help her out.

Amelia had offered a small joyless laugh, “You know you can just ask a maid for something; you don’t have to cook it yourself.”

“I like cooking.”

Amelia didn’t have a response for that, but she did accept and eat the food that Gura prepared for her, and she did it again the next day… And then the next day…

Gura’s worries didn’t cease, and she only continued to grow more alarmed each passing day. She wouldn’t say she was an expert when it came to humans, but she was pretty sure that they needed to sleep just as much as she did, and not only did Amelia go to bed very late and wake up very early, but she looked progressively worse each day.

And now here she was again, standing at the doorway of the kitchen, asking her if she was making breakfast again.

“Yeah,” Gura answered, “You want me to make you some again?”

“Hmm.” Amelia nodded, “If you wouldn’t mind.”

“I don’t.” And she truly didn’t. She’d do a lot for Amelia, considering everything the detective did – or would do for her.

Amelia left the kitchen, and Gura went back to finishing up. The eggs were pretty much completely finished and needed to be plated. She set the pan with them in off the heat, and went to quickly butter the toast. Gura wondered briefly if she should get some orange juice or not, but decided against it – she enjoyed it, but didn’t feel like drinking anything so sugary early in the morning. She made a mental note to talk to Amelia about how her choice in “all natural” drinks soon, because it was sorely misinformed.

Speaking of mental notes, she made another to just ask the detective what was wrong. This was the third day of her depressive state, and Gura was worried sick.

“Alright,” She mumbled, finishing the plates and lifting them up, “Nice and easy…”

She left the kitchen, and into the dining room, already seeing Amelia sitting at the head of the table with her head in her hands. She looked sad, and Gura couldn’t help but feel her heart drop – seeing her friend in so much pain hurt. She gently set the plate of food in front of Amelia, breaking the time traveler out of her thought, and she was at least rewarded with a small, but at least genuine smile.

“Thanks, Gura.”

“No problem.” Gura sat down at the right corner of the table so she could be fairly close to Amelia, and she took a deep breath. Amelia was tentatively poking at the eggs, but at least she did occasionally take a bite. Still, she was being far too quiet, and Gura knew that if she didn’t say anything, this would be another quiet breakfast where she just sat there worried for Amelia.

So…

“Amelia?”

“Hm?” The girl looked up, “Yeah?”

She decided to take a play right out of Amelia’s own book, and ripped the band aid off immediately, “Why are you so sad?”

Amelia blinked in surprise at the question, and she couldn’t help but let out a little huff of a laugh, “Do all Atlantean’s have no tact, or is it just you?”

“W – Well!” Gura felt her face flush, and it got even redder when Amelia started to chuckle. Still, at least laughing was better than moping, so Gura chalked it up to a win. Still, Amelia had avoided the question entirely, and she wasn’t willing to drop it quite yet. “You didn’t answer the question!”

Amelia didn’t say anything. Instead, she set her fork down, and looked over at Gura intently. Being so closely examined was making her feel shy, and she bashfully looked aside, wishing that she was wearing more than some shorts and a really large T-shirt right about now. She felt like an underdressed interviewee next to the fully clothed girl.

The time passed a little more before Amelia let out a soft sigh, “Something came up that I would rather forget.”

Gura wondered if she should press for details. She truly did want to help, but the detective went right back to looking incredibly sad after saying that. “Ah… Did something happen with Calliope?” She lightly prodded.

Amelia’s frown deepened, but she shook her head.

“Oh… Ok.” Gura looked back to her plate and took another bite to quickly try and reorganize her thoughts. This whole ‘getting Amelia to open up about her feelings’ thing was much harder than she thought it would be. Why did human TV shows make this look so easy?

Another painfully quiet few minutes passed as they just ate the breakfast Gura prepared, with not a single word spoken between the two of them. Gura kept glancing over at Amelia, who was steadfast looking down eating her food, and Gura wondered if she should just let it be and hope things sorted themselves out over time. She let out a small huff, ready to call it a bust, and she glanced concernedly over to Amelia again only to nearly gag on her food when their eyes met.

“Um, hi, Watson! Nice weather we’re having!”

It was true at least; the weather did seem pretty nice that day.

“Yeah…” Amelia nodded slowly, “I guess so.”

“Y – Yeah…” She mumbled.

Gura heard Amelia put her fork down yet again, and patiently ask, “Ok, what’s up?”

“Uh… Nothing…” Gura averted her eyes to the other side of the room, wishing that Ina or Kiara would come in here to make things a little less awkward.

“Right.” Amelia deadpanned, “You know I am a detective. Not very hard for me to see that you’re lying.”

Gura didn’t fully manage to hide her scowl – she was supposed to be helping Amelia, and here was Amelia interrogating her! She threw her fork down on the plate and abruptly stood up.

“Gura, what in the -”

“No! Be quiet!” Gura exclaimed.

Ok.

Now what? Her anger quickly faded, and she realized pretty fast that she was being far too dramatic, and she felt her face redden quickly. “Um… Amelia…”

“Yes?”

If Gura could say she achieved anything here, she at least managed to make Amelia briefly forget about her sadness, because the detective looked very amused now. She was an Apex Predator, and Amelia shouldn’t be smiling about her making a fool of herself, but just this once, she’d allow it. At the very least, the tense atmosphere seemed broken.

So… Since things seemed lighter, she figured she’d just go right for it: “I want to help you.”

“Eh?”

“I will help you.” Gura amended – she didn’t want to help her, she needed to, and she wasn’t going to let Amelia push her away. “So please, tell me what’s wrong.”

The genuine surprise that appeared on Amelia’s face made Gura feel like she’d finally gotten through to the girl, and the way Amelia’s face suddenly flushed a little she felt was another good sign. The detective coughed into her hand, trying to regain her composure.

“It’s…” She paused, and Gura made sure to maintain eye contact. “It wasn’t Calliope, not directly.” She leaned back into her chair, looking up to the absolutely massive chandelier Kiara picked out hanging there. “She just found a box I hid in her that I forgot about.”

“A box?” Gura tilted her head.

“Six years ago, I lost…” Amelia’s voice choked, and Gura tensed up and reached out for her, but calmed down when the detective shook her head, “No, it’s ok, I’m fine.”

“Are you…?”

“Yeah… I had two dogs and a cat six years ago that went missing.” She explained, smiling sadly, “I put all of the pictures I had of them and everything that belonged to them into the closet in Calliope’s new room.”

“O – oh…” Gura sat back down, “You don’t know what happened to them?”

“Nope.” Amelia shook her head.

“Wait!” Gura’s eyes lit up, “You can time travel! We can just go back to that time and find them!”

Amelia just shook her head, with a bitter laugh, “You don’t think I tried that? I traveled back to that same day at least a dozen times over the next few weeks.” Amelia wiped her eyes, “I never found them. I looked all over the house, I looked in the woods around my old place, hell, I scoured every square inch of the property, and I didn’t find them.”

“Oh.” Gura looked away, “So… They just went missing?”

“Yeah,” Amelia sighed, “To this day, I don’t know what happened to them. It was just like any other day at the time, I was just at home, wasting time playing video games like I always did back then, and then when I had to feed them, they were just gone. Just minutes before they went missing though, they were in the room with me. The first few times I went back, I followed them through their entire days, watching them play with me, go to sleep on my bed, and then it was like magic, and they were gone.” She ran her hand through her hair, “I’m not kidding, I was watching them one second, and then I blinked and they were gone!”

Gura had always been a tad too emotional for her own good, and seeing Amelia looking so devastated, hearing the sadness in her voice as she recounted that day, and listening to her desperation caused her own eyes to begin tearing up. Her lips wobbled, and she immediately knew that she was going to cry if Amelia continued. “Oh…” She intelligently managed to get out, and she tried to wipe her eyes before Amelia noticed.

“Uh, Gura?”

“W – what?” She said, hoping her eyes weren’t watery when she looked over.

She saw Amelia’s incredulous stare, and felt her embarrassment skyrocket. Shit, she was crying in earnest now that Amelia noticed, it was like a part of her brain realize it was pointless to hide it, and despite her wishes the waterworks just started happening.

“Uhh…” Amelia disbelieving stare dissolved pretty quick when it was clear that Gura wasn’t acting. “Don’t worry, Gura, it’s ok.”

“Ugh!” Gura wished she could just disappear. She was supposed to be comforting Amelia, not the other way around! “S – Sorry, it’s just… I – it’s so sad! I can’t imagine what you w – went through…” Just picturing how helpless Amelia must have been after going back so many times just made it even worse now – fuck.

“It’s ok, Gura, I got over it!”

She sounded incredibly confused, not that Gura could verify, since she had her face buried in her arms, leaning forward in her seat with her plate pushed aside.

“Amelia!” Gura glanced up, wiping her eyes as Calliope came into the room. The reaper stopped at the far end of the table, and glanced at her with a quirked brow. “Am… I interrupting something?”

“No!” Gura interjected before Amelia could say something. “You’re not interrupting anything!” Well, she was interrupting Amelia’s concern for her crying, which as far as she was concerned needed to end before it got even worse.

“Um…” Amelia was clearly still concerned, glancing at her, but eventually she turned back to Calliope, “Right… What’s up, Calli?”

“Your pets…” Gura and Amelia both stilled immediately, and their full attention was upon the reaper now, “They’re missing.”

“No shit!” Amelia growled, “Isn’t that why you promised to look into them for me?”

“No, you don’t understand,” Calliope placed her hands palms down on the table and leaned forward, “They’re not dead, my contact said that he didn’t reap any animals that you described on the day they went missing.”

“They’re alive?” Amelia asked, and Gura felt relief flooding through her. It was stupid, since they weren’t even hers, but seeing hope in Amelia’s eyes made her just as excited.

“That’s the thing, he can’t sense them here either.” She stared down Amelia with an intense gaze, “Do you know how rare that is?”

“Uh, pretty rare, I’m guessing by your reaction.”

Gura nodded along with the detective. Judging by how frantic Calliope was acting about this, it probably was rare, or hell, maybe even unprecedented.

“Extremely rare.” Calliope nodded, and she stood back up straight and made her way down the length of the table, “The fact that your pets are neither dead or alive leads me to believe that something supernatural is occurring. Living beings are capable of escaping death through many means – A Phoenix is reborn from their ashes, some are granted immortality due to their status, some due to ancient magics, some from gods… In every one of those cases though, they’re still here.”

“Huh…” Gura mumbled, “So… The fact that your friend couldn’t sense them at all is strange?”

“Strange is putting it very mildly.” Calliope answered, stopping at Amelia’s side, “There is a case I can see this happening, however.” Calli pointed to the watch that Amelia carried, “Your watch allows you to travel through time. I think someone took them from their place in time, and put them somewhere else, presumably sometime in the future that has yet to pass.”

“Impossible,” Amelia gripped her watch tightly, “I went back and watched them, there was no one else present when they disappeared.” She then paused, “And how the hell do you know about my watch?”

“Death-sensei is aware of all things mortals do.” Calliope muttered, “I’m living in your household in this temporary human body. My sensei just wanted me to be aware of who I was living with.”

Gura felt a tremor of fear run through her at that, “You know everything about us?”

“I do.” Calliope answered, “But unless if it’s important, I won’t go spreading anything around.”

Her fear thankfully faded with that statement, and she felt more relaxed again. “Oh, ok. Good.”

“Anyway, I want you to take me with you.” Calliope turned back to Amelia, “To the past. I want to observe what happened with my own eyes.”

“Oh!” Gura’s eyes lit up, “Me too!”

“Absolutely not!” Amelia exclaimed, “That takes up a lot of power when I go back with multiple people, and I don’t want to get screwed over and be stuck in the past with no way to get home!”

“We’ll be fine.” Calliope replied, “Plus, don’t you want to see your pets again?”

Amelia’s defiance wavered, and then collapsed in short order. “Yeah… Fine… We can go back again, I guess.” She placed the watch on the table, “I just need to enter the coordinates, but I need to look them up, I don’t remember exactly what they are anymore.”

“And I can come too?” Gura asked.

Amelia sighed, “You can, but we need to be very careful… I don’t remember seeing any sharks or reapers back then, so we have to stay hidden, and there will be a lot of me around the place all day.”

“Easy enough, just tell us where they are.” Calliope smirked, “Is that all?”

“Not quite.” Amelia answered, “My watch lasts about seven days or so when it’s just me alone in the past. I never tested it to its absolute limit though, so I’m not sure how accurate that is.”

“Alright…” Gura nodded along with Calliope, wondering where she was going with this.

“Anyway, one thing I do know about it is that if I take one person with me, that time is halved. I assume if I take three people, that time would be halved again.”

“That’s still over a day with just the three of us.” Calliope quickly pointed out, “You’re worrying over nothing.”

“I guess so, but it’s important.” Amelia answered, and finally stood up, “I Just wanted to let you two know… Let me go into my office for the coordinates, and then we’ll give this another shot.”

Gura couldn’t help but smile. Finally, she’d be able to help in some tangible way.

XxXxXxX

Amelia held her powered up watch before her, with Calliope and Gura both standing just a little bit in front of her. The watch had a weird glow around it as she held it up, and the light was casting an ominous shade around the room despite the warm sunlight coming in through the office windows.

“It’s all set.” Amelia said, “Once I hold this button in for ten seconds, we’ll be on our way.”

Calliope looked to her side towards Gura, “Um… Are you really going to wear that?”

“What?” Gura looked at her shark outfit, “Yeah… Why not?”

“I thought you only wore that when you streamed.” Calliope admitted, “Isn’t it a bit… impractical?”

“Amelia told me that it helps disguise my tail,” Gura replied confidently, “And she’s right! I can travel all over and humans will think I’m just wearing a costume!”

“Note to self,” Amelia sighed, “I will eventually tell Gura that.”

“Ah…” Gura blushed, “Right, this time travel stuff is kind of confusing.”

“Tell me about it…” Amelia readily agreed, “Anyway, are you two ready?”

“Wait, one more thing.” Calliope quickly interjected, “You said there’ll be a lot of you around, maybe you should wear something so Gura and I won’t get confused?”

“What?” Amelia paused, and then flushed a little, “I’m not leaving your side. Besides, I wasn’t a detective back then, so I won’t be wearing this.” She pulled on her cape for emphasis, “Plus… Well… I wasn’t entirely in shape back then either.”

Gura tilted her head at the red on Amelia’s cheeks, “Oh?”

“Look, you guys will see when we get there. We’re going now.” She left no room for anymore commentary, and quickly pressed the button.

Amelia closed her eyes, and then the next moment she opened them, they were outside of her home six years ago. Before she’d been a detective, before she decided to take advantage of her watch and make copious amounts of money, she’d been living in a simple small house in a rural neighborhood. It wasn’t a poor area or anything, but compared to her mansion now, the house they appeared before was rather quaint. It was a single floor house that she’d gotten from… She shook her head; those were thoughts she didn’t want to get into now.

“You lived here?” Gura asked, looking the house over, and then she spun around to look at the rest of the street, with similarly sized houses lining it. The only other real distinguishing feature of the place was the woods situated right behind her house that went on for quite a while. The area wasn’t hilly or anything, just a flat and fairly boring area of land… Ideal for raising a family, at the very least.

“Yeah,” Amelia nodded, “Come on, we need to get out of the road, I don’t recall seeing a dorky shark girl and goth outside my house today.”

“H – Hey!” Gura exclaimed, “I’m not a dork!”

Calliope at least didn’t raise any objections as she followed Amelia quickly towards the back of her house and into the woods. Amelia risked a glance at her house, and she grabbed both Gura and Calliope and dragged them into a bush beside her.

“Amelia!” Calli exclaimed, “What-”

“Shhh!” Amelia harshly shushed, “Look over there!”

She was thankful that no one was there to observe them. It must have looked like something straight out of a cartoon – a reaper, an Atlantean, and a detective all huddled behind some (thankfully large) bushes overlooking her old home. She had her eyes tracked though on a dog running through the yard, and both girls with her noticed as well.

“Oh!” Gura exclaimed, “Is that your dog?”

“Bubba, yeah.”

She did her very best to hide how rough her voice sounded, clearing her throat. She saw Calli looking at her with concern, but thankfully Gura didn’t seem to notice. Before Calliope could open her mouth to say something, Amelia shook her head, and was thankful when Calliope paused, and then looked back towards Bubba.

“He’s so cute!” Gura cooed, “Can I pet him?”

“I assume that’s you, then?” Calliope asked, pointing towards the patio of the house. Amelia and Gura’s attention was torn away from the dog as they looked over.

On the patio stood a relatively heavy-set young woman, with the same blonde hair and blue eyes that Amelia had. “Geez, Ame, you can definitely afford to lose a few pounds.”

“Ugh,” Amelia groaned, “That’s what playing video games all day and eating shitty food does to you. Plus, I did lose weight, I’m right here!”

“I play video games and eat shitty food a lot, and you don’t see me looking like that.” Gura countered.

“Why you little -”

“When does he go missing?” Calli asked, getting them back on track, “It’s at the same time as your other pets, right?”

Amelia bit down her irritation at Gura, and replied, “Yeah, in about eighteen minutes and forty-six seconds from now they go missing.” She was looking down at her watch, “Pretty much at exactly seven o’clock on the dot.”

“Huh. That was weirdly specific.” Calliope muttered.

“It’s my thing, ok?” Amelia sighed, and leveled a half-hearted glare at her two companions, “Anymore commentary from the peanut gallery?”

“Peanut gallery?” Gura asked, looking confused.

“I’ll explain later,” Amelia replied holding in yet another sigh. “Anyway, we got to move soon. One of my past selves is going to be running through these bushes soon.”

“Good boy!” They heard the past Amelia exclaim, watching her kneel down to pet her dog, “Let’s go back in now.” She guided her dog inside the house, and shut the door to the patio.

“Alright, let’s move.” Amelia led them out of the bushes, and towards the house.

She stopped at one of the windows, and looked in, spying her past self petting Wellington before sitting down at her computer and browsing some social media sites. With her past self occupied, she felt a little safer spending a bit longer looking in, and spotted Mikki looking at her with her head tilted. The dog was laying down on a bed situated at the far wall, almost right across from the window they were at.

“Awwww,” Gura whispered, “Your pets are so cute!”

“She’s going to give our position away,” Calliope warned.

“Look away!” Amelia whispered, trying to shoo her dog’s attention. Thankfully, after a few moments, Mikki just put her head down and went back to sleep at her bed. “Alright, so… One of my past selves should be looking in through the window over there.” She pointed to a window just over the corner from where they stood, “She’ll be watching them disappear, just try not to make too much noise and she won’t notice us.”

Sure enough, a few minutes later, they heard some shuffling, and they ducked down a bit to make sure that the past Amelia that just arrived at said window wouldn’t notice them looking at her from their own window.

“They’re going to disappear in a few minutes now…” Amelia whispered, “Keep your eyes peeled.”

“Got it.” Calliope replied, her eyes glued to the three animals in the room.

A few more minutes pass, and just as suddenly as they were there, the animals all just disappeared as if from thin air. They heard a startled gasp from the window Past Amelia was looking in on, and Amelia could see both Calli and Gura looking genuinely surprised by the disappearance too.

“We need to move again,” Amelia warned, “The past me in the house won’t really notice for a few hours that they’re missing, so we don’t have to worry about her, but there will be several of me out here looking around in a few minutes.”

This time Gura and Calli followed with no arguments. Eventually she led a little way into the woods behind her house, until the house itself was no longer visible. The sky was still lit, but there were visible signs of orange on the horizon, probably another hour or so of sunlight left.

She turned to both of them and clapped her hands, “Alright, so… Past me won’t be out here for a little bit. We have a bit of time. Did you guys notice anything that I didn’t, or is this a bust?”

Calliope shook her head, “I didn’t notice anything. They just disappeared.”

Amelia tried her best not to let her disappointment show, but it must have by the way Calliope winced and looked away.

“I can still smell them.”

Amelia turned to Gura, “What?”

“They’re still around.” Gura replied, “I can still smell them.”

“You… Can smell them? Is that something all Atlanteans can do?” Amelia asked cautiously, afraid to offend Gura. Thankfully, Gura seemed happy by the question.

“Yeah! We can! This shark tail isn’t just for show, you know!” She spun around and swished her tail from side to side really quickly, happy to show it off. “We also can see really well, and…”

“Yeah, yeah, you can explain it to me later.” Amelia interrupted, “Can you smell where they are?”

Gura looked miffed at being interrupted, but obliged Amelia’s request, and sniffed the air. “They’re pretty close, actually.” She sniffed some more, and walked in a direction deeper into the woods, Amelia and Calliope following her closely behind, “I think… They’re this way.” She pointed further ahead.

Amelia felt a sliver of hope, “Then let’s go!”

Strangely enough, it took only another few minutes, not that much deeper into the woods before they arrived in an area absolutely covered in leaves. There were trees surrounding them on all sides, but before them there was a huge tree, its massive roots looking like a giant hand gripping the ground as tight as it could, with the folds of the earth being pulled up around it. Amelia hardly cared about that though, for at the base of the tree were her three pets – Bubba sniffing around happily, his tongue out and tail wagging like crazy. Mikki seemed less enthusiastic, but was still looking around curiously, while Wellington was laying there asleep, not giving one care to being out in the woods for some unknown reason.

Amelia let out a half cry, and half yell as she rushed forward. Bubba perked up at the person running towards them, but after a few sniffs, he let out a happy bark, and bounded happily towards her. Her knees collapsed to the ground as she reached Bubba, and she tightly wrapped her arms around the dog, “Bubba!” She cried, tears streaming from her eyes.

Gura and Calliope walked over, the shark girl’s eyes were shining as she knelt down and pet Mikki who came over, cooing and loving every second. Calliope on the other hand looked on with a hard stare.

“You’ve never come out this far looking for them?” Calliope asked, looking around the place. “We’re not that deep into the woods.”

Amelia glanced up at Calli, tears still streaming down her face as she held her dog closely, “I – I did… I did. I looked everywhere.”

Calli let out a soft hum, but said nothing else. She took a few steps forward, and knelt down at the base of the tree where the animals were just moments before. Amelia watched the action, but returned her attention to Bubba when the dog started to lick her face. “Oh, Bubba, stop it.” Her voice shook – she couldn’t even remember the last time she had to chastise Bubba for doing something like this, and it made renewed tears appear.

Gura looked up suddenly, and jumped to her feet, Mikki letting out a startled bark. “Someone’s coming.”

Amelia checked her watch, and let out a soft curse, “A past version of myself is going to be coming through here soon. We need to get out of here…” She paused, and then looked at Bubba, “And we need to take them with us.”

“Huh?” Gura turned to Amelia, “Why?”

“Because I don’t find them here – I never found them.” She could see Gura still looked confused, and elaborated, “It’s predetermined. So, I must have taken them from this spot and put them somewhere else.”

“Where, though?” Gura asked.

“I don’t know,” Amelia shook her head, “But we got to go now.”

Calli picked up Wellington, grimacing as the cat let out a warning hiss. She ignored it, and followed Amelia and Gura, who had the two dogs with them. It was just in time too, just as they pass through several layers of foliage, they heard a past version of Amelia running through where they just were.

“Bubba!” Past Amelia screamed, “Mikki! Wellington!” Each name sounded more desperate than the last, and Amelia felt a sharp pang of guilt hit her. She remembered this clearly, she had been looking for days at this point throughout the timeline, at least a dozen versions of herself running through the woods and neighborhoods surrounding her house. If she recalled correctly, this was one of the last times, if not the last attempt she made.

“Please… Come back…” Past Amelia collapsed to the ground, and just started sobbing. Amelia couldn’t see it clearly enough to tell, but she remembered it was what she did. She stayed at that single spot for hours, crying her eyes out, and only went back to the future when her watch was nearly out of power.

“Come on,” She said gruffly, “We gotta go.”

“You’re just leaving her?” Gura asked, her mouth agape, “She’s crying, and you’re just going to steal them?!”

Amelia could see the tears in Gura’s eyes – the poor shark girl really was too empathetic - and felt her own guilt return. She felt empathy towards her past self, she really, really did. It was herself after all, but the timeline had to be preserved. “We can’t…”

“No!” Gura exclaimed, “This is wrong!”

“I know it is, but…”

“But nothing, I wanted to help you Amelia, I really did, but I didn’t want to hurt anyone like this! Losing people hurts, it hurts a lot…” Gura paused, and Amelia knew there had to be a story there. “You can’t just do this!”

“Gura.” Calliope finally spoke up, “That girl IS Amelia. What she is experiencing right now, Amelia has already been through. She understands loss just as much as you do.”

“But we can change it!” Gura insisted, “She’s literally just right over there!”

“That would cause a time paradox.” Amelia weakly pointed out, “It never happened to me, and I don’t know what happens if I were to attempt to do something like that…”

“Ame…” Gura mumbled, “Shouldn’t we risk it anyway?”

Amelia could still hear her past self crying just a little bit away, and she looked down. She didn’t know what would happen if she gave her past self her pets back, but maybe it wouldn’t be too bad? She looked down to Bubba, who seemed to understand there was some sort of gravity to the situation, and had stayed quiet the entire time.

“No.” Calliope placed a hand on Amelia’s shoulder, “Like Amelia said, we can’t risk it.”

“W – wait…” Amelia’s mouth felt dry, “W – What if we…”

She never got to finish her thought, since Calliope’s grip on her shoulder tightened significantly, and she was thrown to the ground. Amelia heard the sound of something flying just overhead, and she then hit the dirt sputtering.

“Who are you?” Calliope’s voice boomed, and she stood protectively over both Amelia and Gura. She held out her hand to the side, and her scythe formed out of thin air, occupying her hand. Amelia looked back, and saw that the thing that flew just over her head was another massive scythe – if Calli hadn’t have pushed her out of the way, she’d be down a head. She looked over to where Calli was looking, and spotted a tall figure standing with a black robe similar to Calliope’s, but where Calli was clearly a human (or at least appeared human), this thing was nothing but pure darkness, except for two glowing blue flames where the eyes would normally be.

“Answer me!” Calliope yelled, “Why are you interfering with a human’s life? Did Thanatos send you to do this?” She took a menacing step forward, “What purpose does taking her pets entail?”

“Thanatos?” Amelia muttered – that was the name of Calliope’s sensei, right? The Grim Reaper? “Wait, does that mean this guy works with you?” Amelia asked.

“I don’t recognize them,” Calli answered back to Amelia, “But they’re marked like I am. Not to mention, they’re pretty powerful if they can make a nullification field around us.”

“A what?” Gura asked.

“It nullifies sound.” Calli answered, “I can see it, but only those with my powers can. It’s useful to keep new souls from panicking when in a chaotic environment when they died… This is an interesting use of it.” She glanced at Gura for a split second, “You should be able to sense it too, Gura.”

Gura squinted her eyes, and then let out a soft gasp, “Oh, I can kind of see it. It’s pinkish!”

“So wait…” Amelia stood back up, her feet feeling rather shaky after the near death encounter, “Bubba… Mikki… Wellington… they went missing because of this guy?”

Said figure raised an arm, and the scythe that was implanted in a tree behind them shattered into nothingness, only to reappear in their hand, much like how Calliope just summoned her own weapon. They then aimed the scythe towards them, their gaze lingering, unblinking, simply watching them with such intensity that Amelia felt rooted to the spot.

“What the plan here?” Amelia asked, her voice hoarse as she gripped her pocket watch tightly to stop her hand from shaking.

“I don’t know if I can beat them, creating a field like this is an extremely advanced technique.” Calliope admitted, “But I need answers. If this is a rogue agent, then it’s important that I get as much information out of them as possible.” She glanced to Amelia, and noticed the watch, “Hold off on leaving.”

“I can help.” Gura picked up a fallen log and gave it a few testing spins in her hand, “It’s not the same as my trident, but it’ll do!”

Calliope looked at Gura in surprise, and after a few moments to think, she gave a curt nod, “Alright. I could use the help.”

Amelia knelt down in place, gathering Bubba, Mikki, and Wellington together, her eyes watching the figure warily. Gura and Calliope started to move, Gura to the left, and Calli to the right. They moved in tandem, keeping the figure between the two of them as they tried to surround them. Unfortunately, the figure was smart enough to start backing up, not allowing them to form a pincer position.

“Who are you?” Calli called out.

There wasn’t an answer, of course. Amelia wanted to roll her eyes. What, did she expect them to spill their life story or something? When it was clear the figure wasn’t going to do anything, Calli decided to act first – she simply disappeared from where she was standing, and a moment later she reappeared right next to the cloaked figure, her scythe ready to swing and rip the person’s head off.

A wide arc – but it hit nothing but air. The figure did the same teleportation ability Calli did, and reappeared a few meters back.

“Calli!” Amelia cried, “Are you trying to kill them?!”

“They’re a reaper!” She snapped, her eyes still locked onto the enemy, “It wouldn’t kill them, their soul will just go back to the underworld.”

“Are they going to do anything?” Gura wondered, she risked a glance over to Amelia, “Maybe we can get those animals back to their -”

At the mention of the pets, the figure jerked their scythe towards Amelia, pointing it at her rather menacingly. Honestly, if she wasn’t so terrified, she would probably laugh… No, wait… She was laughing. Fuck. The absurdity of the situation was starting to get to her. The concerned look from Gura, and Calli raising her brows incredulously at her just made her laugh even harder.

“You have got to be kidding me… I just wanted my fucking pets back… And THIS is why I couldn’t get them back? This is why I couldn’t find them after trying so hard? Because some stupid reaper decided for some weird arbitrary reason to prevent it from happening?!” Her hands were shaking now, and she glared at the Reaper, “Why in the FUCK is this important enough for you to do this? I seriously doubt Bubba is going to be essential for ANYTHING in the future! Why are you back here and preventing me from getting them back?!”

“Uh… Sorry…” The menacing figure actually sounded a little sheepish. Their voice was very deep, sounding like it was intentionally being obscured, and it had a bit of an echo to it. It definitely would be terrifying in any other situation… If it wasn’t used for an apology, anyway.

“Sorry?!” Amelia screamed, “That’s all you have to say?!”

“Ame…?” Gura’s concern look was starting to become a bit more alarmed now, “Are you ok?”

“Am I ok? AM I OK?!” Amelia stomped to her feet, Bubba barking excitedly, not really understanding anything, but really getting into it. “I’ve had the most stressful few weeks of my entire god damn life! I just started to get used to everything batshit insane happening around me! I’ve accepted that mythological creatures not only exist, but for some reason my future self has decided that I have to do this stupid BULLSHIT! Streaming? Playing games?! What the hell??? But you know what, I accepted all of that! It’s all good!” She let out a broken laugh, and quickly caught her breath, “But now, I go back in time for the first time in WEEKS, back to a time where I lost my fucking dogs – and cat – and I learn that, oh no, it wasn’t only within the last few weeks where these mythological bullshit creatures have been around me, it has been for the last SIX YEARS. Are there any other moments in my life where a god damn reaper has involved themselves in my life? Have I actually been interacting with this for longer than I realized? Have demons and angels been among my life without me even realizing?! Is Cthulhu orchestrating my entire freaking life?!”

She had to take another deep breath… All three of the people in the woods were staring at her openly now, even their supposed enemy that was just standing there.

“Um… Wow, Ame…” Gura scratched the back of her head, “There’s a lot to unpack there…”

“Yeah… I guess so…” Wow… It really did feel good to get all of that off of her chest. Just screaming and yelling did wonders for her psyche, and honestly, as embarrassing as it was to admit, she was already feeling a lot better.

“Ahem…” Calli coughed politely, returning attention to herself, “Uh… So that was that… definitely.” She turned to the enemy(?) standing a little away from them, “So I was all ready for an epic battle, but that kind of destroyed the atmosphere a little bit, you know?”

“I get it.” The figure replied, “She can be quite a drama queen.”

“Hey!” Amelia cried, “Who the fuck are you to say that?”

Gura couldn’t help but laugh a little at the response, but Calli stared at the Reaper before her, her concentration not breaking away from them. “Since you’re feeling talkative now, can you explain what your purpose is here?”

The figure before them let out a long sigh – as if Amelia and her friends were being the inconsiderate ones – and shook their head. “I can’t explain everything. There are events at work that are far greater than you realize. All I can say is that you must take those animals back with you. Do not return them.”

Amelia let out a huff of laughter, “S – Seriously? That’s why you’re here?”

“You of all people should be more aware of the machinations of time than most. You know that it is not possible to return them. You try to do so, and the hands of fate will do everything in its power to stop you. And you know it will stop you. Your future is essential to the preservation of the timeline… They, however…” She pointed to the animals; Bubba was running around playfully, not even understanding the seriousness of the situation. Wellington was still in ‘not give a shit’ mode, and was sleeping, while Mikki was off sniffing some plants for whatever reason it is that dogs like to do things like that. “Are not essential.”

“So, what you’re saying is that you’re here to ensure that the timeline stays the same.” Amelia muttered, a frown marred her face, and she closed her eyes tiredly.

“In a way, I suppose I am fate’s answer to this problem of yours.”

“So, you’re not working for Death-sensei?” Calliope asked, “Are you working for Fate? Actually, is Fate even a deity that can be served?”

“It’s not, at least not tangibly. Me being here is essential for the timeline to maintain its integrity, but as far as serving Fate goes...” It wasn’t possible to see their face, but Amelia could tell the figure was scowling now, “It’s only momentarily. Fate and I… We have a complicated relationship.”

“What now?” Gura asked, she dropped the log she was holding, since it seemed like a fight wasn’t about to break out, “You’re just letting us go?”

“As long as you take them with you back to the future, yes. You’re free to go.”

Her pets. Back to the future. Amelia sighed, and looked to them wandering around the clearing. So, this is why she never found them, because she took them away from herself. Took them six years into the future, while her past self cried herself to sleep over the next few weeks wondering where they were. Worried sick about them, and spending countless nights wandering these woods with a flashlight searching for them. Those were awful times, and it seemed those awful times were self-inflicted.

“That’s bullshit!” Gura exclaimed, “you can’t just -”

“Gura.” Amelia stood up, getting the forest debris off of her knees with a few swipes of her hand, “We don’t have a choice. Gather them… And let’s get out of here.”

“But…”

“No,” Amelia said roughly, “They could’ve just killed them… The fact that they spared them and allowed us to take them back with us is a kindness.”

It was bitter to admit as much, but it was true. Not to mention, at the very least she was finally getting them back after wondering for years what happened to them. Gura didn’t look happy, it looked like she wanted to argue, especially with her sharp teeth clenched together so tightly like that. With a sharp look away, she stomped over and grabbed Bubba before he could run off to do something else.

“Why is a reaper doing this?” Calliope asked, “What is your purpose?”

“For now, it’s as I said. I’m maintaining the timeline…”

“No, not that. What are you doing after this? I don’t recognize you at all, and I know every one of Death-sensei’s apprentices.” She didn’t glare, but her stare was sharp enough to cut through brickwork, “Who are you?”

“We’ll see each other again.” The figure replied easily, “You’ll get answers eventually.”

“That’s hardly reassuring.”

Calli knelt down to pick up Wellington, her gaze turned away from the figure for a split second, but when she looked back, they were already gone. The field around them dissipated, and sound returned to the woods. She winced when she could hear the distant cries of Amelia’s past self again, and she noticed her version of Amelia bite her bottom lip as she brought her pocket watch up. Gura looked even more pissed at the sound, her tail twitching in agitation… Soon however, their surroundings disappeared, and they reappeared back in Amelia’s office like they were just less than an hour before, as if they never left for the past at all.

“The watch is going to run out of power soon.” Amelia’s monotone voice muttered, “Carrying an extra three people – uh, animals – made it about to reach its limit.”

“Will you be ok?” Calliope asked.

“Yeah,” Amelia sighed, putting the watch back in her pocket, “We’re in my relative present, so it’ll recharge once it’s out of power. It’s going to override their present to our own now, though.”

Bubba barked happily, and jumped towards Amelia, scratching at her leg until she knelt down and scratched him behind the ear, like she remembered he enjoyed when they lived together six years ago. Her hands shook at the memories, but her conflicting emotions prevented her from being too happy about it right now.

“I can’t believe you listened to them.” Gura seethed, her fists were so tightly clenched that her hands were shaking, and her eyes were locked on the floor. “She was crying, and you just left her there!”

“We had to.” Amelia mumbled, “We can’t do something that never happened.”

“According to who?!” Gura cried, Mikki jumped at the loud sound, and trotted over to Calli, who knelt down and gently pet the dog, though she kept her ears open in case she’d need to intervene.

“According to me.” Amelia replied, “I’m the time traveler here. I know how it works.”

“So, we couldn’t do anything to help her?”

“No! Have you listened to a word I said? Even if we DID manage to help her, that would create a paradox!”

“That’s so heartless!” Gura exclaimed, throwing her arms up, “I thought you were better than that! You… You’re different than other people… I know you are.”

Amelia saw red, “Heartless?!” She tried to calm herself, she really did, but that was a line too far, “Gura, you fucking idiot! THAT. IS. ME. That girl we left behind? THAT IS AMELIA WATSON. I remember crying there, wishing they would come back, and they never did. I remember it all! You don’t think I want to just go back there and give them back? You know how god damn destroyed I was when they went missing? I had just lost my fucking Gr…” She sucked in a deep breath, her heart thumping at the near mention.

Gura looked ready to be just as worked up as Amelia, but seeing the detective’s face twist in pain caused her to blink in confusion, “What?”

Calli was silent, not knowing whether to interject, but opting to say nothing. It really wasn’t her place to say anything after all. The timeline was not a fragile piece of glass easily broken, and there was no way a normal human, even with the assistance of a reaper and an Atlantean would be able to change anything. It didn’t make it any less bitter of course, but that is how it was. Amelia was in the right, but she wasn’t going to say anything to Gura, who at least looked to be calming down thankfully.

“Gura…” Amelia’s heart was calming down now, “If that never happened to me, I wouldn’t have become who I am today. Losing them pushed me to change my lifestyle. Before I lost them, I was just sitting around doing nothing with my life. I would get on my computer, play games, browse social media, and just eat all day… I was not in a good place, physically or mentally. Losing them made me confront all of that, and it made me want to change who I was.”

“It’s still not right…”

“It’s not,” Amelia readily agreed, “I still remember how close I was to just giving up when it happened… It shouldn’t have happened to me, but that’s just how it is.”

Gura nodded slowly, “It needed to happen.”

“That’s right.”

“And you’re just ok with that?”

A humorless laugh. She shook her head, “No… Not really, but it’s what I got to tell myself.”

She wasn’t expecting Gura to hug her, nor for the girl to whisper, “I’m sorry.”

“It’s ok… It’s all in the past…” She hesitantly hugged the shark girl back, her arms creeping around the slightly shorter girl’s body, “And hey, it’s not all bad now, right? They’re here…”

“Yeah, I guess…” Gura mumbled.

As if to punctuate Amelia’s point, Bubba barked loudly, and started pawing at the office door. Amelia let go of Gura, and walked over to the door and opened it, and Bubba ran off into the hallway – a loud crash later, and Amelia winced – yeah, she was going to have to explain to her staff why there were now three additional tenants in the house… Not to mention, she was going to have to go buy food for them as well.

Sensing the tension in the room subsiding for a bit, Calli stopped petting Mikki, and stood up, striding over to Amelia, “When you have a chance, I’d like to talk about that reaper we were fighting.”

Amelia nodded, “Yeah… Ok.”

“Then if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to report to Death-sensei.” She didn’t walk out, she just disappeared like a buff of smoke, inky black darkness lingering for only a few seconds before dissipating.

“Hey, sorry for saying you were heartless…” Gura was playing with her fingers, her eyes averted from Amelia, “I don’t really understand how this stuff works, but… I know you did it with good reason.”

“It’s ok,” Amelia said again, “Time travel is kind of confusing to people… They don’t understand that I can’t just change anything I want. Believe me, I really wish I could, but it just doesn’t work like that.”

Mikki barked now, getting their attention. The dog ran out of the room similar to Bubba, and Amelia couldn’t help but laugh a little. Gura smiled a little too, “So… Should we take them outside then?”

“Might be a good idea,” Amelia noted, “I also need to tell my staff about them before any accidents happen.”

“Will Wellington be ok?”

“Yeah,” Amelia eyed the cat who jumped onto her chair and curled up. “He’ll be fine. Let’s go.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter came about because I realized that, oh shit, I forgot about Amelia's pets! They're pretty cute, I should figure out how to retroactively add them! 
> 
> So I'm like, huh, so why aren't they there, anyway? Let's make it so they disappeared six years ago. That brought up another problem though, why wouldn't Amelia just go back in time and find them? So I made it so they just disappeared - POOF - it wasn't possible for her to find them! But then I needed to explain WHY they went poof, so I introduced a character that wouldn't show up until MUCH later a lot earlier. But then it's like, ok, WHY did they do that? To preserve the timeline! 
> 
> This basically forced me to sit down and figure out EXACTLY how time traveling works before I continued on with the story, and it will be fully explained in the NEXT chapter. It's also worth mentioning that this whole plot point involving this other reaper is the B-plot, the A-plot is still on track to be all about PolyMyth. B-plot will just show up from time to time to keep things moving when it starts to get a bit stale. 
> 
> Another funny note - there was supposed to be a fight between Calli and Gura VS the Enemy Reaper, but I couldn't get it down. I just had no energy to write it. So I instead had Amelia lose her shit and make things extremely awkward. This had an unintended side effect of making the enemy reaper way less intimidating, but I kind of like it. Also, sorry for all of the cussing, I just think Amelia is the kind of person who would absolutely go all out when she's pissed off. 
> 
> NOTE TO FUTURE SELF: NEVER RETROACTIVELY ADD ANYTHING TO THE STORY AGAIN. IF YOU FORGET DOGS, THEN LET THEM STAY FORGOTTEN.
> 
> P.S. Rest of the story is roughly outlined, and up to chapter 16 has been drafted.


	6. Time Travel Is Only Difficult if You Think About It Too Hard!

**Time Travel Is Only Difficult if You Think About It Too Hard!**

Amelia took a deep whiff of the fresh air around her, letting out a satisfied breath. She looked out across a large lake, watching the first orange and yellow leaves of early October fall onto the water, small ripples gently flowing away from where they fall. The sun was out in full force, being reflected almost painfully off of the surface of the water, not a single cloud in the sky. Amelia blocked the sun with her hand shading her eyes, and took in the picturesque sight. Just being out here, away from her office felt amazing.

A bark to her left, and she spotted Bubba and Mikki playing with Gura, the Atlantean laughing and cheering as she threw a frisbee that the dogs both chased after. Mikki would often reach it first, but Bubba in his overenthusiasm would jump onto Mikki and knock them both down, only to grab the frisbee from his companion and trot back to Gura. Amelia grinned at the sight – it just felt like an outing with a friend… She couldn’t even really remember the last time she’d done something like this.

Earlier that day, after her stream (which was early in the afternoon, to accommodate their European viewers), Gura came to her room and asked if they could just go somewhere. Amelia could tell that the shark wanted to talk to her, but humored her anyway. She took both of her dogs, and left Wellington in the care of Kiara, who was more than willing to take care of him, and drove away from her mansion.

Gura sat in the passenger seat, wearing her shark hoodie that she loved so much, and Amelia had to admit that it was probably a good idea. If they were confronted by anyone in the park they were heading to, Gura’s outfit worked as an excellent disguise to the fact that her shark tail was actually a real tail. In the meantime, she herself didn’t feel like changing, and just went in her detective outfit that had quickly become her streaming costume, despite the fact that she was an actual detective, and it wasn’t a costume…

Whatever, when they got there, Gura had immediately started to play fetch with her dogs, and she was more than content to just take in the view.

“Hey, Ame.” Gura called out, and Amelia looked back from the edge of the lake she was standing at, seeing the shark girl walking over to her, both dogs hot on her heels.

“What’s up?” Amelia turned to her and gave a short wave, walking the rest of the distance to meet her.

“I wanted to ask you something,” She admitted. She turned around and threw the frisbee again, causing both dogs to launch themselves after it. “It’s about your time traveling.”

Amelia nodded, she figured it was probably something related to that. “What do you want to know?”

“Can you just explain it to me?”

Amelia exhaled, and watched Bubba yet again tackle Mikki to get the frisbee and make their way over to them. “Yeah, I guess we have plenty of time.”

“Alright, so… Just pretend I’m an idiot and start from the beginning.”

“Is it pretending if it’s true?”

Gura rolled her eyes, and knelt down and grabbed the frisbee from Bubba as he made his way over. “Hilarious, Watson.”

Amelia tactfully tried to hide her grin behind her hand, but the shark girl’s glare told her it didn’t work. “Sorry.” She chuckled, and took the frisbee out of Gura’s hand and tossed it again for the dogs to chase after.

“Well?”

“Sorry, I’m just trying to think where to start.” Amelia sighed, “It’s actually not too complicated from my point of view.”

“Ok then.” Gura shrugged, “In like every time travel movie or story I’ve seen, the protagonist goes back in time and changes things. Sometimes for the better, sometimes for worse…” She paused, collecting her thoughts, “But… When we went to get your dogs here, you said that you couldn’t change anything.”

“Yeah, that’s right.” Amelia replied, “So… Think of time as a straight line, I guess? When I time travel, I’m just going back to some point in that straight line, right?” She eyed Gura, and saw the shark girl nod, “Right. So, this straight line can’t be broken, or bent, or split, or anything. Every single action that you and I take is essentially pre-determined to happen before it even happens. Just now, I took the frisbee from you and threw it to them, right? That action was always supposed to happen. I didn’t go back in time to make it so you throw the frisbee, because that would mean a copy of me would have already arrived and told me to stop and hand it back to you.”

“Um…” Gura scratched her head, “So if you went back in time to this exact moment, there’d be two of you, right?”

“There would be two of me, yeah, but they’re both technically still just me. They’re not a completely separate entity.”

“And you couldn’t just tell yourself to stop? What’s stopping you from doing it right now? From taking that watch and changing how things play out?” Gura sighed, “That’s what I don’t understand… I feel like you should be able to change things.”

“Yeah, I get it, but that’s not possible. IF, and that’s a BIG IF. If I decided to do that, it wouldn’t change anything for me, because it never happened to me. I can’t create new events to happen on the timeline.”

“So, what would happen?”

Amelia shrugged, and threw the frisbee once again when Bubba came over with it, “I don’t know.”

“You never tried?” Gura asked in surprise, “But you sound so sure that you can’t change anything!”

“A paradox, maybe?” Amelia shrugged, “I did try it once. When I first got the watch.”

“To do what?”

“I was in school and flunked my algebra test.” She shrugged at the pointed stare Gura gave her, “What? I was a dumb high school kid, alright? Anyway, I failed the test, so I decided that maybe I should go back in time and retake it… I tried, and when I went to school, I hit my head on the pavement… Knocked myself out.”

“What?”

Amelia laughed at her incredulous look. “Yeah… So, I wake up, and I decided to try again. This time I decide to appear directly in my school bathroom, and the door was locked!”

“Amelia…”

“I know, I know… I was stupid! Why didn’t I just use my watch to break in after class ended and just copy someone else’s test and just replace my flunked copy?” Amelia nodded, “It’s because I was a stupid kid and didn’t think of that.”

“Um…”

“Anyway, in every case when I tried to stop my past self from taking the test and retake it myself, for some reason something happened to prevent it from happening.” Amelia pointed out, “And it was really stupid and arbitrary stuff. The bathroom just happened to be locked? I was just clumsy enough to hit my head? I tried a few other times too…” She shuddered, “Not gonna go into that.”

“So, this line you’re referring to earlier?” Gura asked.

“Yeah, so it can’t be changed at all!” She smacked her hands together, “I’m explaining this absolutely terribly, aren’t I?”

“Yeah, kinda.” Gura admitted.

“Basically, I can’t change anything. Events will just arbitrarily happen to prevent me from changing things.”

“I don’t like how that sounds,” Gura muttered, “So everything we do is supposed to happen. Does that mean we don’t really have any free will?”

“I guess so, yeah.” Amelia replied, “To most people it won’t feel that way, because they’ll never get to see ‘behind the curtains’, so to speak.” She shrugged helplessly, seeing Bubba trotting back over, “It sucks, and I hate thinking about it, so I try not to.”

“So… All of those times you came back to see me wasn’t because you wanted to, then? It was because you had to?”

Amelia sucked in a breath, “I… I don’t know.” She eyed Gura and saw how hurt she looked, and she internally cursed. It was clear that she did something to make the shark girl really look up to her in the future (or past, as it were). “I mean, yes, I guess so?” She winced at how bad that sounded, “But I like you, Gura!”

“Eh?” Gura blinked a few times, her cheeks reddening, “What?”

“I mean, even if it wasn’t predetermined for me to go back and do… whatever it is that I’m supposed to do, I would still do it because I want to help you.” She hesitantly looked away, “You’re a nice girl, you’ve helped me out with staying sane these last few weeks, so it’s the least I could do.”

“Oh, yeah, right, ok.” Gura chuckled, she ducked down and quickly grabbed the frisbee from Bubba in an effort to distract herself, “Yeah…”

“So yeah, this is why I don’t like time traveling to the future,” Amelia replied, “When I don’t know the outcome of future events, it’s easier to fool myself into thinking everything I do is not predetermined.”

Gura threw the frisbee again, and started to walk forward, Amelia naturally going to her side to maintain pace. “Ok, so if you can’t change things that you can remember, then how about things that you can’t remember?”

“Like when I was a baby or something?”

“No,” Gura shook her head, “Like when you weren’t even born yet. If you travel back to a time where you weren’t alive, couldn’t you freely change stuff then?”

“Well, there would be other people to be concerned about,” Amelia mumbled, “But I suppose everything I do in the past would be fine as long as I don’t go back to that same time again to try and contradict what happens.”

“Right!” Gura nodded, “So doesn’t that mean you have free will? You don’t HAVE to do it, but you can!”

“I guess? Kind of.” Amelia muttered, “Everything is already predetermined though, so if I go back, it’s because I was supposed to go back.”

“Even if you go back like a million years before humans were even around?” Gura asked, “What if it’s some event that was never recorded in history. What if there’s no one around to see you do it, wouldn’t you then be able to freely do as you want?”

“Again, kind of.” Amelia replied, “I guess in a way it’s free will? If it’s a hypothetical situation where it doesn’t matter what I do, then maybe I guess you could consider it to be free will?” She shrugged, “I mean, it would still be predetermined in the end though.”

“So, no matter what, even if you go back a million years just to fart and come back, it’s all predetermined?” Gura asked.

“Gura?!” Amelia laughed, “I – I guess so?”

“That sucks.”

Amelia grinned, and watched Mikki finally start to fight back, trying to get the frisbee from Bubba. “Well, I mean, if I just travel back to ancient Egypt right now and do nothing, I guess I’m freely doing it, I suppose. It would be on a whim… But if I did that, it would also become predetermined.”

“So, like… Do we create predetermined events with our actions?”

“Ugh…” Amelia groaned, “This is starting to hurt my head. Can’t you just let this be simple and say that events are predetermined and that’s it?”

“Why can’t time travel be like in movies?” Gura complained, kicking up some dirt, “It’s so much easier to get.”

“Is it?” Amelia raised a brow, “In books and movies, what typically happens is that the person goes back to the past and becomes their younger self… So, what happens to their younger self? Did they just replace them? Doesn’t that mean that they just committed murder? Or maybe they just switched bodies? The person who went back traded places with their past self, giving their past self the shitty end of the deal.”

“Uh… I never really thought about that.”

“Most people don’t.” Amelia sighed, “So they go into the past and create an alternate universe where they make all of the right choices. What happened to the world they just left? Does it just stop existing? Did the choices they make in this new timeline prevent John Doe from being born later on? Isn’t that also considered murder? What is preventing them from doing it all again, just repeating that time, staying young forever?”

“Alright! I get it!” Gura exclaimed, “Sheesh…”

Amelia laughed, “If only I could use time travel to become younger… I could live forever.”

“So, you can just teleport and go around and do predetermined events.” Gura said flatly. “Time Travel sucks.”

Amelia laughed out loud, and knelt down as Mikki finally trotted over with the frisbee. Bubba right behind looking vengefully at his playmate. She then looked thoughtful, “Teleport?”

“Yeah… When we got your pets, we were at your mansion before, and then went back to your childhood home before.”

“Huh…” Amelia shrugged, “You know, I never thought of it like that. I guess I can teleport anywhere, as long as I return to my relative present, it should be fine...”

“You never thought of that?” Gura asked, looking at her in surprise, “But like, that’s the one super power you have! That and Time Travel, but like I said, you’re kind of making that sound like a garbage power.”

Amelia tossed the frisbee again, and winced at it landed within the branches of a tree, getting stuck. Bubba and Mikki circled around below like sharks their prey, and were barking at it, as if it would make it fall down. “Damnit…”

“Nice job.”

“Shut it.” Amelia sighed, and started making her way over, Gura not far behind.

“Hey Ame…” Gura mumbled, “How old are you?”

“Twenty-six,” Amelia replied, “I’ll be twenty-seven in January though.”

Gura paused, “And humans only live to be eighty?”

“If we’re lucky.” Amelia responded, stopping below the tree, crossing her arms, “Do you see a stick anywhere, Gura?” There was no reply, and she turned around, “Gura?”

“So… You only have like fifty years left?” Gura asked, and there was an expression on her face that Amelia truly couldn’t make out. It was like… Sadness and realization all mixed together. It looked like she’d swallowed a bitter pill.

“Roughly, yeah.” Amelia said.

“Oh…”

Ah – that was why. When they first met, she recalled Gura saying that she was over nine-thousand years old. At the time she thought it was a joke, but after getting to know Gura, maybe it wasn’t? “Are you actually over nine thousand?” She asked.

“Yeah,” Gura mumbled, “I told you before.”

Oh… Oh wow. She wasn’t lying about that. She behaved so much like her that she just assumed that they were relatively the same age. To learn that Gura was so old though was quite a bit of a shock. “I didn’t believe you at the time,” She admitted, “You don’t seem that old to me.”

Gura frowned, “Atlanteans develop at a different pace than humans… I guess I’m the equivalent of a human teenager? I don’t know, really. I’m not even that old! My dad –” She noticeably winced at the mention of him, much to Amelia’s curiosity, “He’s over forty-thousand years old.”

Holy shit. How long lived were Atlanteans? Not to mention what was that about her father? She wanted to ask more, but she pushed those thoughts to the side for now. Now she realized why Gura was looking so down, why she suddenly shut down, and was looking to the ground. The shark girl must have known that human lifespans were short, but she supposed Gura never made the connection until just then that her friend’s lifespan was just as short. The life of Amelia Watson would just be a small road bump of her life, and would probably be forgotten to the passage of time.

“It’s alright, Gura. Fifty years is still a really long time!” Amelia quickly tried to cheer the girl up, “We’ll still have plenty of fun together!”

“I guess…”

Damn it. She wished Gura was bitching to her about the intricacies of time travel again. What generally made the shark girl happy? Food? Well, there wasn’t a lot of that around right now. Dogs? There were two of them, and they were both barking like crazy, and that wasn’t doing very much to help Gura’s mood. Well… Gura was generally a pretty touchy-feely kind of person…

“Huh?” Gura blinked when she felt Amelia’s arms wrapping around her frame, “Ame?”

“Uh…” Amelia was never one to hug a person unprompted, and felt a little lost. Gura acting so surprised definitely wasn’t helping matters. “It’s ok, Gura…” She muttered awkwardly, hoping it’d work.

Gura let out a soft laugh, her cheeks gaining a bit of red when she hugged back, “You’re a bozo.”

“Yeah, well, you’re a dork.” Amelia muttered, watching in near fascination as Gura’s mood improved with just a hug and some words. She’d been a little suspicious for a while now that maybe, just maybe, Gura had a little bit of a crush on her. Gura liked to talk about helping her a lot, made her breakfast often, would often come hang out with her, especially after getting their dogs back…

… Gura happily leaned into the hug.

Well, whatever, crush or not, she was very thankful that Gura wasn’t looking so sad anymore. She didn’t know what she would have done if the girl started crying on her… Probably something way more drastic than a hug, that’s for sure.

“Is this a predetermined event?”

“God damnit, Gura.” Amelia sighed, and went to let go, but Gura was still holding on tight. In response to her loosening her grip, it seemed the shark girl tightened her own, keeping her in place. “Even if it is, I’m doing it because I don’t want you to be sad.”

“Ah…”

Amelia couldn’t see too well, considering she was hugging Gura, but she was fairly certain that those words were making the shark girl’s face burn a vibrant red. Not to mention she heard happy little giggles coming from her, and Gura nuzzled her head into Amelia’s chest, as if she were a dog or something.

Yeah, she was positive Gura had a crush on her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Where's Ina?!" I hear you asking. "I thought this was Polymyth, not AmeSame!" I hear you complain!
> 
> Ina and Kiara both are featured heavily in the next chapter. In fact, next chapter was actually supposed to be the sixth chapter, but I decided to make this the sixth chapter instead since it can kind of act as an epilogue to the whole time traveling shenanigans of last chapter.
> 
> Thank you for reading!


	7. Did Someone Order an Old God Repair Service?

**Did Someone Order an Old God Repair Service?**

Ina didn’t really mind the fact that she was alone fairly often. Ever since getting her strange new abilities thanks to the Ancient Ones, she’d have to stay hidden away from normal human eyes – her new form made her too much of an oddity, and thanks to that, she picked up several hobbies to occupy her time. She first started practicing guitar, figuring that it would be easy enough… After a few sessions of her fingers being in agonizing pain, she did eventually get the hang of it, but it wasn’t really as fulfilling as she hoped it would be. That was when she turned to drawing, a hobby she’d picked up as a kid, but stopped practicing over time.

As it turns out, she was damn good at it.

It wasn’t like that was the only reason she picked it up, of course, she truly enjoyed drawing. There was just something about creating art that was both exhilarating, and incredibly cathartic. When she was stressed, she’d draw. When she was upset, she’d draw. When she had nothing better to do and she felt like she was just wasting days away, she would draw. Once she got a computer and started on digital art, her passion was exposed to the world, and for the first time she’d started to amass a small following of people who would tune in to watch her drawing streams. When the opportunity to apply to Hololive was on the table, she’d looked into it and applied with haste.

Not only did Hololive give her an opportunity to expand her audience and let her continue doing that which she loved most, but she was also allowed to stream herself – a human with distinctly unhuman features – without any fear of repercussions. Granted, the people watching her thought it was an elaborate outfit, but that didn’t matter to her. Her Priestess garb and tentacles were exposed to the world, and no one minded. Even better, she debuted with several other people, all of whom were special in their own ways. She truly wasn’t alone anymore!

Well… Sort of. She did tend to stay in her room more often than not, so she didn’t really see them very often. Amelia was fairly shy, and didn’t like to bother them, primarily – she noticed – due to her fear of them. Granted, that fear Amelia exhibited those first few days abated quite a bit over time. She noticed Amelia talking quite often with Gura, and the two of them hung out a lot now. Honestly, it was pretty obvious to her that her Atlantean gen-mate was infatuated with the detective, and it wouldn’t surprise her if Amelia was aware of it too – hell, the detective had to be by this point, she was after all, the only one Gura would seek out of them all.

Speaking of Gura, she was probably the shyest of them all. Aside from Amelia, Gura would avoid any conversation with her, Calliope, and Kiara. At first, she thought the shark girl was avoiding them, but she learned over the last few days that perhaps it was more due to the fact that the Atlantean didn’t know what to say. She’d spied Gura walking up to Kiara on more than one occasion, only to turn tail and flee. It was cute, and she wondered if perhaps there was something she could do to help Gura out with that.

Calliope was in her room just as often as she was, but unlike herself, if Calli wasn’t in her room, then chances were very good that she was off doing her “scythe-swinging-lessons”, as she liked to call them. She didn’t really ask for an elaboration on what that meant, she wasn’t sure if she’d like the answer or not. Still, it meant that she rarely saw the reaper, and their interactions have been pretty nonexistent as a result. Hm, she’d have to fix that too at some point.

Kiara was the most approachable of her generation, though she’d yet to really talk to her either. The phoenix made a habit of chatting up every person she ran into in the house, and it quickly endeared her to the staff, which Ina honestly felt slightly miffed about. Despite actually not being a human, Kiara was on much better terms with almost everyone, unlike herself.

Well, today she was going to fix that! She set her stylus down, and stood up from her computer chair. Her art stream was done, and she had one goal in mind: Talk to someone!

She looked around her rather plain room, and decided that perhaps the first step to this endeavor would be to change into something a little less strange. She took off her priestess dress, making sure not to ruffle her wings too badly, and she made sure her tentacles were back in their own dimension, so not to scare the people she’d hopefully run into. She decided upon something simple – a purple T-shirt and some shorts. That was nonthreatening, right? She still had her pointed ears, appendages on her head, and tentacle hair, but aside from that, she was perfectly, one hundred and ten percent human!

She took a step out of her room, and saw a cat walking down the hallway first.

Huh, come to think of it, she’d been seeing this cat and two dogs around quite often now. She was fairly sure the first few weeks or so there hadn’t been any animals around, but maybe she just wasn’t paying attention? Whatever, what was its name again? She followed the creature, and noticed a tag on its collar.

“Here, kitty, kitty, kitty!” She followed the cat down the hall, until the feline wandered into the dining room and just fell on its side. She couldn’t help but smile as the cat meowed at her, and she knelt down and began to pet him. She looked at the tag, “Wellington… Huh.” She scratched his neck, “Who’s a good boy!”

“You know, you usually say that to a dog?”

Ina glanced up and there was Kiara, watching her with an amused glint in her eye. “It’s true though, he is a good boy!”

Kiara laughed, and knelt down next to Ina, “Yeah, I guess that’s true.”

Well, objective complete. She was petting a cat, and she successfully talked to someone. Now what? Kiara was here, maybe the next step would be to find everyone else?

“Where’s everyone else?”

“Calli’s hiding in her room.” Kiara replied, “Busy making a new music video, I guess. I think Gura and Ame-chan are playing a game together.”

Ina frowned slightly, “Hm, I wonder if I should go talk to them?”

Kiara grinned, “Oh! We can go talk to them and do a big group collab! That would be fun!” She jumped to her feet, “Come on, Ina, let’s do it!”

“Uh, ok?”

“Yeah! It’s only fair that you and me get to do this! Ame-chan went on some sort of adventure with Calli and Gura, and they came back with some pet animals! We should go on an adventure too!”

“Uh,” Ina chuckled, “I think just playing video games would be good too.”

Kiara shrugged a little with a pout, “I guess…”

Well, that would definitely explain the dogs and cat, at least. She couldn’t help but feel a bit of envy though, likely what Kiara was feeling too, if she had to guess. She talked to Amelia the first day she was there, but then not really much after that. She wanted to make friends, but as much as she enjoyed drawing, maybe she should consider doing what Kiara said, and collab with them. In fact, she was warming up to the idea already!

“Yeah! Let’s collab with them!” She excitedly clapped her hands together – which unfortunately startled Wellington and sent the cat fleeing, “Uh… Oops.”

XxXxXxX

“Aw yeah!” Amelia thrust her fist into the air, “Who’s the loser now, Gura?!”

“Yeah, yeah…” Gura grumbled, rolling her eyes, “Again!”

They sat in a guestroom-turned-rec room, one of Kiara’s dubious improvements to the house. Still, Amelia couldn’t really complain too much. Literally all that was in this room was a massive hundred-inch television (which cost an absolute fortune, by the way), and a massive couch that could easily hold at least ten people comfortably. Hell, it was so comfortable that she was considering just using it instead of her bed. Kiara had bitched about her choice in carpet on her first day, but the carpet in this room? Holy shit, it was so horrendously orange that she feared her retinas would burn if she looked at it for too long.

“Alright, if the little shark wants to lose again, who am I to deny your wish?” Amelia grinned and stuck her tongue out at Gura, who quickly returned the gesture.

“Get ready to eat your words, Watson…”

Before Amelia could retort, the door slammed open, banging against the wall so hard that cracks appeared. It wasn’t as if she noticed the cracks in the wall, because she jumped so hard and so violently that she accidentally tossed the controller across the room, smashing the TV directly in the center, immediately destroying the most expensive television she’d ever bought. Gura was hardly any better, the shark girl let out the shrillest and most ear shattering shriek Amelia had ever heard, and she jumped off the couch all four limbs on the ground, ready to dart at a moment’s notice.

“Amelia Watson!” Kiara cried, “Gawr Gura! Ina and I have come to collab with you! Denial is not an option!”

“Uh…” Ina winced as she followed Kiara into the room, “Well… That’s not good.”

Kiara paused, and looked at the TV, “Oh… Whoops?”

Amelia closed her eyes, and slowly counted to ten, with her hand resting on her heart, willing for it to stop beating so rapidly. She opened her eyes, and let out another deep breath, “Ok… That’s fine… We can collab…”

Gura in the meantime, steadily stood back on two feet, and managed to shakily say, “Y – You two scared the crap out of me!”

Hm… Amelia glanced at Gura, interesting to know. Gura’s shyness could apparently be overridden by being scared half to death. She definitely agreed though, “No kidding, plus…” She mournfully looked at the destroyed TV, “My TV…”

Ina stepped forth, “Uh, I think I can fix it?”

“Oh? I doubt you have a spare screen in your room.” Amelia dryly stated.

Ina chuckled, “I’m no Ina-gineer, but I have this instead.” She snapped her fingers, and AO-chan appeared in her hands, “Fixing something like this should be fairly easy.”

Amelia eyed the book warily, noticing Gura also looking apprehensive. Kiara though was looking at it in excitement, clapping her hands together, “Oh! Are you going to use magic!”

XxXxXxX

Maybe using the Ancient One’s power like this wasn’t the best use of them, but well, Amelia looked distraught over the destruction of the device, and this would be a good way of trying to start off some sort of friendship with her. She opened her book to the proper page, and began to read off the passage.

What she was saying was in no language a human being was meant to speak. The low guttural sounds coming from the back of her throat, the monstrous growls and ominous hisses were all perfectly normal to her, but to the occupants in the room, it was quite unnatural. If any human were to attempt to speak this language, or even look upon the words on the pages of AO-chan, their mind would instantly be destroyed in a destructive incineration. Following that, wherever the person was would instantly be evaporated, as if a nuclear bomb had just gone off, and all life within at least a fifty-mile radius would drop dead.

Hm… Note to self, make sure to never leave AO-chan lying around for others to possibly read.

Before her, the television that was destroyed started to glow a sickly purple, and Ina could feel her own eyes starting to burn, knowing that they were glowing the same ominous color. The lights in the room were flashing in a quick pattern, and all the air itself grew almost unnaturally still. The screen’s tragic death was slowly being reversed, the shattered glass slowly reforming back to its perfect shape. When she reached the end of her passage, when the voices of the Ancient Ones in her mind were at their peak, demanding that she unleash this power onto something actually worth using it on (in fact, they sounded quite desperate, almost like they were ashamed their nigh-unstoppable might was being used as nothing more than a quick repair to some electronic device), she slammed the book shut, and all of the lights in the room flashed back on, as if nothing had happened at all.

“There!” She smiled happily, “All done!”

Amelia was visibly shaken, the detective giving her a thumbs up before she collapsed into the couch, unable to stop shaking. She stared ahead, her gaze not focused on anything in particular, but unbreaking all the same. Gura was hardly in better shape, the shark girl wobbling onto the couch, and burrowing herself into Ame’s side, hiding her head in the detective’s blouse, as if she was afraid to face the world.

“G – G – Good job, Ina-c – chan.” Kiara pat her on the shoulder, the phoenix giving her a fragile smile, “B – But next time… I – I can just buy a new TV, alright?”

Ina frowned, “Oh… Was that too much?”

“Um…” Kiara was shaking a little too, and she looked to the two girls huddled together on the couch, “I’ll b – be honest. That w – was one of the most terrifying things I – I’ve ever experienced in my entire life.” Kiara paused for a moment, “A – and I’ve lived quite a lot of lives.”

Ina winced, “Oh… It was that bad? Sorry… I thought I would try to be nice…”

Maybe leaving her room wasn’t the best option after all… Her talk with Amelia that first day went well, she thought – hell, she even flirted with her a little bit at the end, but… Looking at the detective now, it was clear that despite knowing about the supernatural, that she wasn’t ready for anything like that. The aura of the Ancient Ones was rather powerful, and normal mortals tended to have an almost instinctual fear of it. Hell, if the phoenix who’d lived for millennia wasn’t ready for it, she wasn’t sure anyone would be able to witness that. Oh… She felt like crying now, that wasn’t good. She had to suck it up, and get to her room first.

She wiped her eyes quickly, “I just remembered, I have something I need to do. If you’ll excuse me…” She quickly turned away, and would have closed the door, but it was imbedded into the wall pretty good right now. Well, walking out will have to do then.

“W – Wait!”

Ina stopped, and glanced over her shoulder, seeing Amelia calling out to her.

“Y – You wanted to collab r – right?” Amelia was gently petting Gura’s still shaking form, “W – what game do you want to play? I – it’s the least I c – could do, since you fixed m – my TV.”

Amelia was still shaking, her voice was still wobbling, but she was still willing to collab with her. Oh no, oh no, oh no… Her eyes were starting to tear up, she quickly wiped them away, “I don’t mind what we play.” She replied, looking at Kiara, who was gently smiling at her.

“Come on.” Kiara kindly put a hand on her shoulder and guided her back into the room. The phoenix had already stopped shaking, probably due to so many years lived, and having to deal with a reaper for so long probably at least made her build up some sort of resistance to terrifying visuals.

She allowed Kiara to lead her into the room, and she sat on the edge of the couch, beside Kiara, with Gura on the other side of Kiara, and then Amelia was on the far side. Kiara sat close to Gura, despite how large the couch was, so Ina decided to sit relatively close to Kiara. A good half of the couch was being completely ignored.

She wished she knew what to say though. She was still feeling a bit teary, and didn’t trust herself to talk quite yet. Thankfully, Kiara being the extrovert among a group of introverts, quickly took to her role, and asked, “So what are we gonna play?!”

“Um…” Amelia glanced at the game they were currently playing – Smash Brothers – and Ina figured that was as good as anything. Fortunately, Amelia agreed readily, “I guess we can just keep playing this.”

“Oh!” Kiara’s eyes widened, “I’ve never played this before!”

“Neither have I.” Ina spoke up, thankful that her voice didn’t wobble – she was getting her emotions back under control now.

“Heh, you’re not alone.” Amelia muttered, “Gura and I just tried it for the first time today.”

“Oh…” Kiara paused for a moment, “So this is gonna be amateur hour, then!”

Gura finally started to unfurrow herself from Amelia’s side, though she was still a bit shaken up. “I – I can set up a guerilla stream?” She said, but it was stated as more of a question than a statement.

“Yeah, w – we can do that.” Amelia nodded, grimacing at the remnants of the shakiness still in her voice, “I have a laptop in my office we can set up a capture card on, I can go get t – that.” She went to stand, and Gura looked hesitantly at her, as if wanting to follow, but she eventually decided to stay behind as Amelia walked out.

“Hello, Gura!” Kiara exclaimed, happily hugging the shark girl, causing her the squeak in surprise, “I don’t think I have ever seen you not attached to Ame-chan’s hip! Are you feeling ok?”

“I – I – I’m fine!” Gura exclaimed, her eyes switching between Kiara and Ina like a cornered cat. It was honestly the most adorable thing – who knew the Atlantean would be so shy around other people? Ina couldn’t help but coo as she watched Kiara continue to tease the poor girl.

“You know you can always hang out with me and Ina!” Kiara continued on, “You’re always with Ame-chan, isn’t that boring? You should get to know the rest of us!”

Ina enthusiastically nodded to that, “Humu, humu.” She intoned, and noticed Gura’s eyes falling on her, “Ah… Gura, are you ok?”

Gura looked confused, “Uh, I guess so?”

“About what happened earlier, I mean,” Ina clarified, and saw the dawning comprehension on her face. “I’m sorry if I scared you…”

“W – Well…” Gura fidgeted, leaning away from Kiara, and outright growling at her when she started to try and pet her head, “H – Hey, I’m not a dog, you know!”

“Aw, but you’re so cute, Gura-chan!” Kiara couldn’t help but exclaim.

“Gura-chan?” The shark girl wondered aloud, looking at the phoenix like she’d grown an additional head, “Doesn’t that mean you like me or something?”

“Aw, why do you look so disgusted by that?” Kiara whined, leaning away from Gura and towards Ina, “Ina! She hates me!”

Ina held Kiara as the girl started to fake cry into her chest, and she looked up at the Atlantean and helplessly shrugged at the girl’s incredulous look. “I thought you liked it when girls treated you that way,” Ina finally spoke to Kiara, gently comforting the girl, “After all, you’re still after Calli.”

“Ack!” Kiara jumped out of Ina’s grasp, and stood, “Why! I never!”

“Save it for the camera, Kiara…” Amelia called out as she entered the room, “I swear, you’re so hyperactive.” She walked over to Gura and sat back down in her spot. Gura immediately sat close to her again, and Amelia briefly smiled towards her, gently patting her head, ruffling her hair a little bit, to which Gura just happily leaned into, loving the feeling of Amelia’s fingers running through her hair.

Ina looked over to Kiara, and Ina witnessed a knowing smirk cross the girl’s face at the affectionate display. However, the phoenix didn’t say anything, and instead just sat back down beside Ina, “Whose channel should we stream from?” She asked.

“Eh, we can do it from yours or Ina’s channel,” Amelia muttered, setting up the capture card – first plugging the Nintendo into it, and then plugging the card itself into the PC. She sighed as she picked up an HDMI cable, and plugged it into the TV shortly after, and she came right back to where she was. “Alright, just give me a moment to set things up on here…” She started tapping keys on the laptop.

Ina decided to bring up an earlier topic that was interrupted, especially now that Amelia was here, “Hey, uh, Ame, Gura…” Both girls looked over to her, and she felt incredibly self-conscious again. She looked to the floor, the only real source of comfort right now was the heat Kiara was practically radiating from her body.

“I’m sorry for, you know, scaring you guys before. I wasn’t thinking.” She paused for a breath, “Sometimes I forget about how scary my powers can be for people who’ve never experienced it before… I never wanted to scare you like that.” Those tears from earlier were threatening to return again…

“It’s cool,” Amelia replied, “I’m glad you fixed it, it would have been a pain in the ass to buy a new one.”

Gura nodded shyly, “Yeah… It’s ok.”

“Still…” Ina muttered, “I should’ve made sure you guys were ok with it…”

“It’s all in the past now,” Amelia assured her, stopping her typing to look over at Ina now, giving her full attention. “Yeah, it’s scary, but… I know you wouldn’t hurt us. You said you wouldn’t when we had our first talk, remember? I believe you.”

Ah, Amelia remembered that. She felt her cheeks warming, glad that Amelia had so much trust in her. “Ah, well then…” She didn’t really know what to say.

“Amelia’s right. I don’t know you, but y – you seem ok.” The shark girl muttered.

“And I don’t mind either!” Kiara exclaimed, “Honestly, Ina, you’re among friends, relax!”

Why did Kiara have to say it like that? Friends – something she’d longed to have, only to just recently get them. Amelia nodded along to Kiara’s assessment, even as she went back to setting up the stream, while Kiara just started hugging her again happily – the phoenix really did love her physical affection – while Gura, the most subdued of them, just gave her a small half-hearted smile when she looked over. Friends… Ah, it was wonderful. She wiped at her eyes, hoping that no one would notice.

If they did, they were polite enough to not say anything, and soon Amelia pulled away from the computer, “Ok, stream is scheduled for twenty minutes from now, I guess that’s enough of a warning. I put it on Ina’s channel since she repaired the TV and all.”

“I’ll go ask Calli if she wants to join us!” Kiara exclaimed, jumping out of her seat and rushing off.

“I guess I can go make some popcorn,” Gura muttered, jumping off of the couch, and leaving just Amelia and Ina.

Amelia stretched her arms out, and let out a satisfied sigh as she collapsed back onto the couch. She closed her eyes, and just leaned back, letting out a loud yawn. Ina watched it all, and couldn’t help but smile at the display – it was just so cute. She felt her heart skip a beat when Amelia’s eye opened, and looked directly at her, “Something up?” She asked.

“Not really, just admiring the view.” Ina replied.

Amelia’s face flushed red, her eyes widening a bit, “Uh…”

Oh, that may have been a bit too forward. Sure, Amelia was definitely attractive, and sure she did flirt with her a little on their first meeting, but they really didn’t know much of anything about each other. Ina felt her own face burning red up to the tips of her ears, and she faked a cough, “S – Sorry, I don’t know what came over me.”

Amelia looked away, “Ah, um, ok.”

Well, crap, this was awkward.

“Ina…” Amelia muttered, her face still a little red, but she pressed on after a moment’s thought, “A – are you feeling better now?”

“Y – Yes.”

“That’s good,” Amelia muttered, a bit of the embarrassed quivering leaving her voice, “I was just wondering… Is there a way to build up some sort of resistance to the Ancient Ones power? A way to make it so it doesn’t feel like I’m going to be crushed under this… this weight of, like… oppressive fear.” Her brow furrowed, “I don’t really know how to describe how it feels.”

“Well, repeated exposure usually.” Ina replied, glad that Amelia moved pass the awkwardness, “It’s just something you get used to over time… When I first got this power, I was terrified every single time I used my power because of it,” She chuckled, “You can probably imagine, most of the first few years I lived with this I rarely slept.”

“Ouch…” Amelia winced, “That must have sucked.”

“You have no idea,” Ina muttered, not really wanting to remember such days.

“Then sometime soon, can we just practice?”

“Practice?”

“Building that resistance, I mean.” Amelia replied, “So I can be around while you’re using the power and not feel like I’m going to piss myself in terror.”

“Amelia!” Ina choked on laughter, “Language!”

“Oh please, you’ve heard far worse.” Amelia chuckled.

Ina paused, and then nodded slowly, “If… if you’re sure, then yeah, I can help you out… It won’t be easy though.”

“That’s fine.” Amelia replied, “I should learn to get used to all of this anyway, it’s only fair if you’re going to be living here anyway.”

Ina smiled fondly at Amelia, and almost physically feel her affection for the girl growing. It was excruciatingly rare for a human to know about her existence, and of those that knew, only her family and a few members of the agency she was housed with upon gaining her powers wanted to learn to tolerate the overwhelming darkness and despair that the Ancient Ones radiated… The fact that a girl that she’d known for only a couple months was not only willing to learn, but wanted to for her sake… She felt a deep seated envy for Gura at that moment, resentment, maybe, but she squashed it as soon as she felt it.

“Then it’s a date.” Ina replied with a smile, and laughed when Amelia again turned red. She couldn’t help it, the poor girl acted so composed, but the moment she teased her about anything even remotely close to feeling fondly towards her, she just completely broke down into an embarrassed blob.

“Geez, Ina…” Amelia grumbled.

“Popcorn!” Gura announced, entering the room, and she happily hopped onto her seat beside Amelia, leaning closely against the girl.

Again, that envy appeared… and again, she squashed it. They were friends, and that is what she would treat them as. Nothing more. Gura was willing to tolerate her, and she wasn’t going to compromise that over something as stupid as jealousy.

“Oh hey!” Amelia grinned at Gura, and took some of the popcorn, “Took your time, didn’t you, bozo.”

“Hey,” Gura complained, “That’s what I call you!”

“Get some new material,” Amelia chuckled, chucking some popcorn in her mouth.

Kiara entered shortly after, looking down dejectedly, “Calli said no…”

“Aw, it’s ok,” Amelia replied, “She can play with us next time.”

Kiara sat down between Gura and Ina again, and Ina didn’t realize how much she missed the phoenix’s warmth until she was right beside her. She leaned a little closer, “How much longer until the stream starts?” She asked curiously.

“Now, actually,” Amelia replied, “Get ready to get your butts kicked.”

“Oh! You’re on!” Gura grabbed a controller, as did Ina and Kiara.

Amelia started the stream.

XxXxXxX

It was awkward at first playing with people who she only interacted with briefly here and there, but she was determined to make it work. Thankfully, the game itself was a wonderful ice breaker. While the first few matches were stilted, with only Kiara keeping any semblance of conversation going. A little while later, Amelia and Gura’s natural competitiveness against one another started to overtake their shyness, and Amelia began to trash talk the group, causing Gura to join in.

Ina wasn’t amazing at the game, but since Amelia and Gura fought so much, often ignoring herself and Kiara, she often lasted for quite a while. Unfortunately, in this current match, she was knocked out early, while Kiara did her best to avoid any and all conflict, preferring to watch Amelia and Gura take each other out. Then Gura was knocked off of the edge of the map, losing her last life. The shark girl set her controller down and pouted, giving Amelia the stink eye. Unfortunately, Amelia reveled in this attention.

“Hah!” Amelia cheered, “Looks like you and Ina are going to be sleeping with the fishes!”

Ina couldn’t stop herself, “Well joke’s on you, I can do that with my eyes closed.”

A brief pause, and Amelia let out a chuckle, “Ina, oh my god… That’s so bad…” Kiara was too focused on the game to give much of a reaction, and Gura just groaned, but Ina noticed her lips quirking upward.

“Ina, telling dad jokes again… I’ve been listening in on your streams, you know.” Kiara was still focused on the game.

Sensing another opportunity, she struck: “I thought I was telling you jokes.”

“What?” Gura looked confused.

“Because her dad’s not here…” Amelia shook her head, “Damnit Ina, don’t look so proud!”

She couldn’t help it, she could barely contain her laughter, but Amelia’s incredulous stare sent her over the edge, and she leaned into Kiara’s warmth while laughing all the while.

“Oh!” Gura exclaimed, “I get it!”

“Watch out Ame-chan!” Kiara screamed, and on the screen her character attempted to smash Amelia into the stratosphere. Unfortunately, she misjudged the distance, and fell just shy of hitting Ame’s character, and Amelia was able to clutch a quick win. “Damnit! You’re cheating!”

“I am NOT!” Amelia exclaimed, her mirth evident in her voice, “Get good, Kiara!”

“I guess you could say you fell short, Kiara.” Ina burst into laughter at Kiara’s loud groan, and the phoenix, who’d been leaning forward this entire time, collapsed backward into the couch.

“Another game?” Gura asked.

Amelia and Kiara readily agreed, and Ina opened her mouth, only to be shushed by Kiara, “No! No more dad jokes!”

“What?” Ina grinned, “I was only going to say that I wanted to play again. It would be… Inappropriate to say another joke there.”

“Ina…” Kiara groaned, both Gura and Amelia were stifling their giggles at Kiara’s misfortune. Kiara looked over to them, “You guys have anything to say?”

Ina saw the glint in Amelia’s eyes, “I was going to tell a time traveling joke, but you didn’t like it.”

“Inacredible!” Ina felt tears starting to leave her eyes she was laughing so hard now. She could only barely see Gura leaning forward to check out the laptop.

“Man, chat is going a thousand miles a minute.” She mumbled, “Ah geez… You guys are a bad influence on them, they keep super chatting crappy jokes!”

“You guys are horrible!” Kiara exclaimed, “I don’t know why I wanted to do this in the first place!”

“Don’t lie, you love it.” Ina grinned happily at the phoenix, “Come on~!”

Kiara continued to insist that she wasn’t having fun despite clearly enjoying her time, and Ina wondered when the last time she’d had this much fun with people… Or hell, when she was last hanging out with people her age – eh, well, Amelia was relatively close to her age, anyway - just sitting around playing games and sharing crappy jokes. The voice of the Ancient Ones that always lurked in her mind were forgotten, and for the first time since she’d come here, she felt really happy and at peace.

It was far too soon that the stream was ending, it’d been a little over two hours, but Ina wished it’d go a little longer. She wasn’t great at the game, but just being with friends was so much fun.

“Thank you for coming!” Amelia spoke into the mic.

“Bye!” Gura called out behind her, with herself and Kiara joining in a moment later. Her ending screen showed up as Amelia muted the mic, and she turned to the three of them with a grin.

“Well, that was fun.”

“It really was, we should do that again sometime!” Kiara enthusiastically exclaimed, clapping her hands together, “We should have a collab every weekend!”

“I’d be ok with that,” Gura replied, having lost a lot of her shyness over the course of the collab.

Ina readily agreed, nodding her head so hard that her hair-tentacles flapped around nearly smacking her in the face, “Yes! This was really fun!”

“Then it’s decided!” Amelia exclaimed, “Starting today, we’ll try to collab every weekend!”

It was after that, when Ina was back in her room preparing for dinner with her friends that she couldn’t help but happily cry. Gura offered to make them all dinner, and considering she was still riding off of the high from that collab, she of course agreed, as did Amelia and Kiara. She wiped her tears as she lay in her bed. She didn’t actually need to come in here for anything, but with Gura heading to the Kitchen, Amelia going to her office to organize some files really quick, and Kiara saying she needed to check her computer, she’d feel a little awkward with not doing anything, so she said she’d go to her room…

It gave her the perfect time to just reflect though, and just be so happy, and then the tears just started rolling.

“Get it together.” She mumbled to herself.

The whispers of the Ancient Ones were still present in the back of her mind, still whispering their nonsensical mantras and chants, and she focused on it to calm herself down. She’d initially hated the Ancient Ones presence, but nowadays, it was almost a calming influence at times, especially times like now.

She let out a sigh, and opened her eyes, feeling calmer, her tears gone.

“thank you, AO-chan,” She affectionately murmured.

The Ancient Ones themselves gave no real response, not that she ever expected them to, but all the same, she’d like to imagine that they’d be suffering if they knew that they were a calming influence on her, rather than a maddening one.

With that wonderful thought in mind, she left her room, heading to be with her friends.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapters 8, 9, 10, and 11 are all written, just need editing. Chapters 12-21 all have rough outlines.
> 
> I don't actually have much else to say. Expect the next chapter in the next 4-5 days or so.


	8. A Tale of Loss, and Then Loss Again, and Again, and Again…

**A Tale of Loss, and Then Loss Again, and Again, and Again…**

The meals Gura prepared were always delicious. Amelia wasn’t entirely sure how a girl who lived a majority of her life underwater in an ancient city was capable of cooking so well, but then again, considering her already considerable lifespan, perhaps it wasn’t that far-fetched after all. Maybe she could convince Gura to quit Hololive, and just become her chef full time. Honestly, she should really say something to her to let her know how much she appreciated her food, and how often the shark girl would cook breakfast, lunch, and dinner for her.

“For such a doofus you really do know how to cook.”

Perfection. She couldn’t have worded a better compliment if she tried.

“Who’re you calling a doofus, dingus?” Gura fired back just as quickly.

Quite an eloquent riposte, if Amelia did say so herself. However, she foresaw such a response coming, and with wit borne from years of intense detective work, she responded with, “I’m calling you a doofus, short stuff.”

“Ack!” Gura placed a hand dramatically over her heart, “How could you say something like that?!”

“Can’t you guys ever just flirt normally?” Ina lamented from her spot beside the two of them. She’d been fortunate enough to come down for breakfast (Well, lunch really, seeing as it was past noon, but she just woke up, so whatever), and got the opportunity to eat some of Gura’s wonderful cooking, though that always came with the caveat that she had to listen to their bickering as well. Her plate was empty, and she pushed it forward so she could lean forward on her elbows at the table, grinning as both girls started sputtered at her accusation.

“Flirt? With her?” Amelia looked to Gura, feeling her face heating up, “She’s too much of a dork for me to flirt with!”

“Hey!” This time Gura actually did sound a little offended, “You’d be lucky to flirt with someone like me… I – If that’s what we were doing!” She added quickly, her own face turning a bright shade of red, “Bozo…” She muttered as an afterthought.

“Oh yeah?” Amelia’s attention was back on Gura, and Ina resisted the urge to roll her eyes as they both started with the pet names for each other again. Honestly, it was like living with an old married couple. A part of her felt envious of their relationship, wishing she had that same sort of easy companionship the two of them have begun to develop over the last two weeks or so, and another part of her wished they’d shut up.

“ – A stream later!” Ina perked up, realizing she missed some of the conversation, especially when both girls were looking at her.

“I’m sorry, what were you saying?”

Amelia frowned, “Were you not listening at all?” She shook her head, “Whatever – Gura and I are going to have a rematch in Smash Bros later, and we need a referee so _someone_ won’t cheat.”

“Yeah!” Gura nodded, “I don’t want this nerd to unplug my controller in the middle of a match again!”

“That never happened!” Amelia cried, “They’re WIRELESS for god’s sake!”

“Yes!” Ina exclaimed rather loudly, hoping to stop another flirting match between the two of them, “Yes! I’ll do it!”

“Great!” Amelia clapped her hands together, and then started rubbing them together, “Soon everyone will know that I’m the superior player!” There was a brief pause, and then she asked, “Should we invite Kiara?”

“Sure.” Gura replied, sitting back down in her seat now that their incredibly heated argument and not-flirting-no-matter-what-anyone-says match was over, “Might as well have a free-for-all while we’re at it. Our group collabs always get a ton of viewers.”

“But we do them every weekend already,” Ina felt the need to point out, “You want to do another in the middle of the week too?”

“Why not?” Gura shrugged carelessly, “It’ll be a big guerilla stream, no problem!”

“How about Calli?” Ina brought up, “She’s never played anything with all of us.”

“I guess you’re right,” Amelia muttered, “Outside of our first collab together, I really haven’t done much with her.”

“She’s always in her room or working,” Gura added, “She never has time to do anything with us.”

“Didn’t Kiara ask her to join us yesterday?” Amelia asked, “She mentioned something about trying to get Calli to join us.”

“She did.” Ina replied, and there was an odd glint in her eyes as she asked, “Why do you think Calli hasn’t joined us?”

Amelia felt a little apprehensive, as if Ina were a professor wanting the correct answer from her. She shook the thought aside – Ina was a friend – and answered, “I… I have no idea.”

Ina chuckled softly, “Aren’t you the detective, Amelia?”

“Of course, I am!” Amelia answered perhaps a bit too quickly, “I just don’t like to psychoanalyze my friends!”

Ina laughed openly, “I’m just messing with you Ame! You haven’t been around Kiara or Calli that much, so maybe you didn’t notice. Whenever I see Calli and I mention Kiara, she gets all quiet.” Gura and Amelia looked surprised, and she huffed, “Neither of you noticed? It’s obvious that she’s avoiding Kiara.”

“I guess that makes sense,” Gura mumbled, “I mean, Calli didn’t really like Kiara back when we first met.”

“Oh yeah, she was pushing her away, huh.” Amelia said, feeling her heart relaxing now that Ina wasn’t focusing on her profession, “So… You’re saying that she won’t join us if Kiara is playing with us?”

“Maybe we should give Kiara some pointers on how to get Calli to like her.” Gura mused.

“Well, she can always take her out to the pool to try and woo her or something,” Amelia shrugged, “I think it would be pretty romantic to take someone you love to the pool all by yourself, no one anywhere around, the moonlit sky above you…”

“A pool? Why not a beach?” Ina mumbled, though she was overshadowed by Gura’s incoming outburst.

“Wait, wait, wait!” the shark girl slammed her hands palms down on the table, and jumped to her feet. She leaned forward and stared intently at Amelia, “We have a pool?”

“Well yeah,” Amelia laughed, “You think I’d buy a mansion and not get a pool to go along with it?”

“I don’t know, would you?!” Gura exclaimed, “That’s beside the point! You know I am an Atlantean, you know I LOVE water, and you NEVER mentioned to me that we have a freaking pool?!”

“Uh…” Amelia scratched the back of her head nervously, “Sorry?”

“God… You’re such a jerk.”

“Takes one to know one!” Amelia countered, her grin back on her face.

“Oh yeah? Well -”

“GUYS!” Ina yelled, getting their attention, “Please… Can we focus for a moment? We were talking about Calli.”

“Aren’t we done?” Gura asked, “I mean, if Kiara plays with us, she won’t. There’s nothing we can do to make her like Kiara, and I don’t think we should force it…”

“That’s the thing!” Ina exclaimed, looked between the two of them again, “I don’t think Calli actually hates Kiara – I think it’s the opposite, in fact.”

“The opposite?” Amelia asked in surprise, her brow rising, “How do you figure?”

“It’s just a feeling I have… They’ve known each other for longer than all three of us have been alive, and if Calli really hated her, wouldn’t she have told her to leave her alone by this point? Kiara is a smart girl, and if Calli told her up front to leave her alone and stop bothering her, I think she would stop… There must be some sort of reason that Calli is still associating with her, even if she tends to avoid her a lot.”

“Why don’t we just ask her?” Gura asked, “We can ask her if she wants to join our collab too! A stone with two birds, and all that jazz!”

“Two birds with one stone, is the saying, Gura, but I don’t know if that’s the right thing to do…” She fretted, frowning down at her fingers folding nervously together, “Isn’t that a little tactless?”

“We can be subtle,” Amelia replied, “We’ll ask if she wants to collab with us, bring up Kiara, and see how she acts. We’ll ask her about it then so it seems like a natural transition.”

“Yeah! All tactfully!” Gura nodded triumphantly, and stood up as did Amelia, both heading towards the door, “Come on, Ina!”

Ina sighed tiredly, but dutifully stood. Amelia and Gura were good friends once she actually got to know them, but put both of them together, and she was getting a little tired at how much they liked to play off of each other. It was certainly a stark contrast to how Amelia behaved those first few days. Now the detective was much more open, and she was clearly happier as well, especially if she was willing to go talk to Calli, the one she seemed to fear the most at the start. It seemed that trip to get her pets did wonders to help her grow closer to them all.

Still, when they stopped and looked back to her to make sure she was coming, she couldn’t help but smile herself. It was nice to finally have some friends.

XxXxXxX

Calli’s incredibly ugly pink door stood before them, and Amelia raised her hand confidently and gave it a knock. “Hey, Calli? Are you in there? We want to ask you something!”

“Yeah, be right there!” The reaper called out.

Amelia really didn’t have time to do much of anything other than shuffle her feet uncomfortably before the door swings open, and Calli is looking at them a little breathlessly, as if she’d just got done with a light jog. “What were you up to?” She couldn’t help but ask.

“Making music,” Calli replied, “It helps calm me down. I’m glad you guys came when you did, I wanted to talk to you about that reaper we fought.”

“Oh really? What do you have?” Amelia asked, her eyes widening at the news.

“H – Hold on!” Ina called out, raising her hand tentatively, looking slightly confused, “What is this about a reaper?”

“Oh, we never mentioned it to you, did we?” Gura muttered.

“It doesn’t matter, come in.” Calli strode back into her room, and after but the merest moment of hesitation, the others followed behind her. As before, her room was immaculately clean, hardly a stray particle of dust in the air. She really didn’t even want to walk on the floor, lest she accidentally ruin the perfectly uniformed carpet beneath her.

“I feel like it does matter,” Ina replied, also cautiously stepping into the room and walking a little ways in. She looked around, as did Gura, and Amelia realized that this was perhaps their first time into Calli’s room.

Amelia shook her head from her observations, and added in, “They didn’t seem overly hostile.”

Saying that seemed to at least placate Ina somewhat, she looked a little less tense, though it was clear to see the worry still lingering in her eyes. Her frown didn’t fade, but she did manage to say, “If you say so, Amelia.”

“What have you got for us, Calli?” Gura asked, taking charge of the conversation like it was the most natural thing in the world. Amelia couldn’t help but feel a little proud of her – when they first met, Gura never voluntarily said a word, and yet here she was, talking to the reaper like she was a long-lost friend, despite the fact that they’d barely said more than a few words to one another this entire time.

“Death-sensei mentioned they didn’t know who the reaper was,” She revealed, much to Amelia disappointment. Wasn’t the Grim Reaper supposed to know everything? Why wouldn’t he know something so damn important?

“Seriously?” Gura moaned in frustration, externally expressing Amelia internal disappointment, “That’s the information you got for us? Why even say anything to us at all then?”

Calli frowned, collapsing down onto her computer chair, “I figured you should at least know, since you guys were there.”

“Thank you for that,” Amelia said, deciding to stand in place awkwardly in the middle of the room. Gura stood close by, seemingly on the same wavelength as Amelia when it came to not wanting to mess up anything in the room.

Ina had a bit more confidence as far as that went though, and seated herself on the bed. Gently sitting down, and then leaning back, her tentacles appear and acting as a rest for her back to lean against. “Was there anything else they said?”

“Yeah, sensei mentioned that we shouldn’t be worried about it,” She sighed in frustration, “They’ve always been like this though – when something important is happening, they just like to sit back and let mortals deal with it themselves.”

“I guess that makes sense,” Amelia hesitantly supplied, “They are death, after all.”

“Yeah,” Calli shrugged helplessly, “If you guys see that reaper again though, you let me know immediately. Death-sensei might not be taking it seriously, but I am. There’s no way there should be a rogue reaper, I can account for everyone else.”

“Yeah, well, that’s nice, but we want to ask you something. Do you want to have a collab with us?” Gura asked.

The incredibly abrupt change of subject caught Calli completely off guard, and she sputtered a little bit before spitting out, “Uh – s – sure? I guess?”

“Cool!” Gura grinned happily, “We’re going to invite Kiara, too!”

If Amelia wasn’t looking for it, there is no way she would have noticed how icy Calli’s expression got for a split second – her eyes narrowed dangerous, and they glowed a near-sinister red – but then she closed her eyes, and seemed to regain control of her breathing. Amelia glanced over at Ina, and gave a curt nod, it seems the priestess witnessed the same thing.

“Is that so?” Calli asked, her voice void of emotion.

“Yeah!” Gura replied, “We should do a full group collab!”

Calli took a deep intake of breath, and then let it out through her nose. “I’m booked.”

“Huh?” Gura frowned, “You just said yes!”

Amelia winced, and nudged Gura. The shark girl improved leaps and bounds over how shy she was before, but surely, she could see that she was pushing some of Calli’s buttons right now? The reaper did not look happy, and Amelia wasn’t too keen on getting her anymore upset if at all possible. Gura glanced over, and winked at her, and Amelia couldn’t help but blanch in horror.

Oh god, she was intentionally doing it.

She was interested in what Calli’s problem was, sure, but she didn’t know if antagonizing her like this was the way to go about it. She looked back over to Ina, who was still on the bed, but was incredibly still. Her eyes were glued onto Calli, and Amelia took that as her cue to keep her eye on the situation for now as well. She’d let Gura run the show for a little bit, and intervene if things got a little too hot for her to handle.

“I can’t do it.” Calli spoke again.

“Why not?”

“I just can’t.”

“You’re not answering the question!” Gura exclaimed, “Why are you avoiding Kiara?”

Amelia winced. That was FAR too direct, and lacked any amount of tact or subtlety. Calli’s face grew red, and Amelia knew that Gura went too far in that moment.

“Who the HELL are you to come in here and say shit like that to me?” Calli yelled, jumping to her feet, sending her chair to the floor behind her, “You don’t know anything!”

Gura took a hesitant step back, her brow creased with worry, and it was clear to Amelia that the shark girl realized she crossed a line. Calli took another menacing step, while Gura took another step back. Sensing that things might escalate a little too much, Amelia took a deep breath, gathered what little courage she had in the face of a pissed reaper, and pulled Gura to her side, taking a step forward and shielding the Atlantean slightly with her body. She felt Gura pressed into her side, and thankfully, the action made Calli snap out of her anger – the reaper blinked a few times, straightened up, turning away from them.

“Guh… Look, if there’s nothing else, can you guys leave? I’m busy with making this song. I told you everything you need to know about the reaper.”

“I’m sorry…” Gura muttered quietly.

Calli looked back over, her sharp gaze softening a little when she saw how Gura was still hiding behind Amelia, “It’s ok… Just… Just drop it, ok?”

Ina stood, and marched over to them, her tentacle going back to the void, and she gently smiled at Calli, “Sorry to bother you, Calli.”

“It’s cool,” She repeated, rubbing her eyes. She went back to her computer, and slumped down in her chair, her gaze staring hard at the floor.

Sensing that the reaper didn’t have anything else to say, Amelia guided them out of the room, and gently closed the door. Gura was still being very quiet, and even Ina was silent in contemplation.

“Well… That probably could’ve gone better.” Amelia murmured, “I think you might have gone a little too hard there, Gura.”

“I know…”

“Just next time let me or Ame talk to her, alright?” Ina asked, and when Gura nodded, she gently pet the shark girl on the head. “Good girl…”

Gura growled halfheartedly, “I’m not a dog, you know.”

Ina chuckled, but stopped all the same, “Sorry, I’ve just seen Ame do it and I thought it was ok.” There was a coy smile on her face again, and she hid a smile behind her hand, “Oh, is that just something you let your girlfriend do?”

Damnit, Ina…

“Wh – What?!” Gura launched herself away from Amelia at that moment, “It’s not like that!”

For a supposedly 9000-year-old shark, she sure acted like such a kid sometime. Still, it was endearing, and Amelia couldn’t help but chuckle, even if her face was just as red as the Atlantean’s. “There’s nothing like that, Ina.”

“Oh, sorry.”

She sure didn’t sound very sorry.

“Whatever…” Amelia sighed, and the trio started to walk away from Calli’s door, “So… I guess we can confirm that Calli IS intentionally avoiding Kiara.”

“Not that there was any doubt.” Ina replied, “I wonder why, though.”

“I don’t think we should bother her about it,” Gura said quickly, eyeing the door behind her as they walked away.

“You don’t say?” Amelia rolled her eyes.

“Well… For now, we should avoid mentioning it to her,” Ina spoke up before Gura could get a word in edgewise and kickstart yet another bickering match between the two of them, “And I have a stream I need to start soon, I’ll see you guys later tonight for dinner?”

A few minutes later, and plans for dinner done, the three parted to do their own jobs. There were some cases that she could work on, if she wished… But maybe it wouldn’t hurt to have a guerilla stream? Or hell, maybe she’d play with Bubba if he was still asleep in her office.

Even as she made her way down the hall alone now, her thoughts were still on Calli, and she couldn’t help but wonder what it was that made her so wary of Kiara.

XxXxXxX

Days later, in their rec room with the large TV that Ina had repaired with the power of ancient magics, Amelia, Gura, and Kiara all sat together, casually watching TV together. They weren’t streaming, but just channel surfing, the remote in Kiara’s hand as the phoenix lazily switched through the channels as it rained lightly outside. Kiara sat on the end of the couch, leaning on the rest, her head resting in her hand, while Amelia was beside her under a blanket, her eyes flickering close every few seconds before she forced them back open. Gura in the meantime was on Amelia’s other side, wrapped up in her own blanket and leaning into her, her eyes closed, and she was breathing softly. She definitely could be mistaken for being asleep, but every once in a while, she responded to a question or comment Kiara or Amelia would make about the shows they were looking through.

“TV sucks at this time of day,” Kiara mumbled, having passed every channel at least once.

“Just go to the food network,” Amelia complained, “I love watching them bake stuff.”

“I’m with Ame, here.” Gura sleepily replied.

“You’re not even awake!” Kiara looked over, a smile playing at her lips, “You also look very comfy!”

“Ame’s a comfy pillow,” She mumbled, “And I am awake.”

Honestly, Amelia didn’t mind too much what they watched – she was hardly conscious at this point. She felt her eyes starting to drift close again, and this time sleep was beckoning her. With Kiara’s unnatural body heat, and Gura burrowing into her side, she was comfortably warm, and drifting off just sounded so nice right now. Her head tilted, leaning onto Kiara, who didn’t say anything, but she did feel the phoenix gently start run her hand through her hair. If she’d been awake, she might have asked her to stop, but it felt really damn good… She leaned further into it, loving the sensation of Kiara’s nails gently scratching at her scalp, the nice tingling feeling as they just barely touched.

“Hey, Amelia, are you in here?” The door to the room opened, and Amelia lazily looked over, and saw Calli walking in. The reaper looked up, and then froze.

Ah – Kiara, of course. She blinked the sleepiness out of her eyes, and looked to Kiara, who’s expression was lighting up with excitement.

“Calli!” The phoenix cried, “You’ve finally come to find me!”

“I’m not here for you, Kusotori!” The reaper heatedly replied, though her gaze was locked onto Amelia still, and the look she was giving her was quickly scaring her awake. The reaper looked upset, her lips in a very thin line before she huffed, and turned around, out of the room.

Whatever that expression was, Amelia wanted to find out, so she got up, her body feeling incredibly chilled as she left the warmth of the blankets. Gura blinked her eyes in confusion – clearly, she’d fallen asleep at some point. “I’ll be right back!” Amelia made sure to say as she made her way to the door, hoping to catch Calli.

“Wha – What’s going on?” Gura asked.

“Calli. Said she wanted to talk to me.” Amelia replied, “I’ll be right back, so put something good on, Kiara.”

“Yeah…” The phoenix looked a little glum now, and it was pretty obvious why. Calli had been particularly short with her that time, unusually so. Was it because she’d been holding her as she was drifting off to sleep?

Well, she might as well ask.

Calli thankfully didn’t get too far, and Amelia caught up with little effort. The reaper spared a quick glance at her, but didn’t stop her pace. She let out a soft huff, “What do you want?”

Oh, that sounded harsh. She was upset, that was clear. “You said you wanted to talk?”

“It can wait,” Calli replied, “Why don’t you go back in there and cuddle some more with Kiara?”

Ah, shit, so that was it. Amelia wished she could understand where the reaper was coming from here. On one hand, she denied avoiding Kiara at all, and claimed that there was nothing wrong, but then something like this happens that completely contradicted her point. Not that the reaper would ever admit to much. She’d bet her liver that the moment she asks what is wrong, Calli would moodily say nothing was.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

Too bad she didn’t make a bet with anyone… Not that anyone who knew Calli would have made that bet in the first place. Still, it did kind of upset her that Calli was getting upset about this when she made every effort she could to avoid Kiara, and when they did meet, she’d just berate her and put her down.

“There’s not nothing wrong, Calli.” Amelia growled, “That wasn’t nothing just now!”

Calli stopped abruptly, and turned to look Amelia, her eyes glaring, “What is with you guys? First Gura, and now you? Why won’t you guys leave this alone?”

“What?! You brought it up this time!” Amelia accused, “You just came in there and yelled at Kiara before leaving! Why are you so mean to her?”

“I’m…” Calli forcefully closed her mouth. She closed her eyes next, and a moment later forcibly let out some air from her mouth, relieving some of her building anger. “It’s complicated. Just leave it at that.”

“You can talk to me,” Amelia replied, “Or talk to Ina at least, she’s probably good at this kind of stuff.”

“There’s nothing to talk about.”

Amelia groaned, and wanted to pull her hair. Getting Calli to talk seemed like it was impossible. She racked her brain for something to tell the girl to convince her that she could share her troubles with her, and then one thought hit her mind – her secret. She’d lied to everyone she knew about being a detective, so perhaps if she revealed this to Calli, showed her vulnerable side with something she was terrified of sharing, maybe Calli would be willing to open up to her.

“Calli…” She mumbled, her heart thumping so loud she could feel it beating in her ears.

“What.”

“Well…” She swallowed, though her mouth suddenly felt like cotton. It felt like a good idea before, but now second thoughts were invading her mind.

“Spit it out, Watson.” Calli sighed, “I have other things I can be doing.”

It was now or never.

“I’m not a real detective.” Amelia let out in one quick breath. Her heart felt like it was going to go into cardiac arrest as she continued, “I lied about it all. I forged all of my credentials, and used my time traveling to make them as convincing as possible.”

Holy shit.

Oh fuck.

She actually said it. She looked to the floor, not really wanting to see the disgust in Calli’s eyes. It was horrible saying it out loud, and she couldn’t help but feel a bunch of shame welling up inside of her. She tried to never think about it, but she really was a fake – a nobody who just managed to get lucky from a gift she’d gotten almost a decade ago now. It was due to this that she never made acquaintances, or befriended many people. The risk was just too high that someone would find out, and then they could ruin her.

“So what?” Calli asked.

Surely, she didn’t hear that right? She looked up, at Calli, her mouth agape.

“What? Just because you spilled your secret you expect me to tell you my life story? Is this trauma show and tell?” She sneered at Amelia, “Don’t you dare try and guilt me into talking about this! This isn’t about you, and you need to learn to keep your damn curiosity to yourself.”

It always sucked when people were right about something bad you did. In this case, perhaps Calli was in the right, she was trying to guilt her into talking. She figured that she could help Calli by revealing something about herself to try and get the reaper to talk. Was that manipulative? Yeah, it probably was, and it was certainly a pretty shitty thing to do to someone you’d consider a friend. All of this was true.

It didn’t stop her from crying though.

“Ah…” Amelia ashamedly blinked back the first wave of tears, and coughed into her hands to try and regain control of her emotions. “S – Sorry.” She coughed again, trying to hide her sniffle.

“Oh my god.” Calli groaned, “Watson…”

“I’ll be going,” Amelia turned quickly, not wanting to cry in front of Calli.

“Damnit Watson, don’t go now.” Calli gripped her arm.

The sheer absurdity of the situation was evident to both of them – Amelia had just been doing the same thing Calli was doing earlier, and vice versa. A complete role reversal. If she wasn’t going to cry in a few more breaths, Amelia would have laughed about it.

“Look…” Calli let out a frustrated breath, “Fuck… I’m sorry for saying it like that.”

“It’s fine…”

“No, no, it’s not!” Calli’s grip tightened, “You were trying to get something out of me, yeah, but I shouldn’t have thrown that in your face like that. It’s clear that that must have been… tough, to tell me.”

Amelia didn’t risk saying anything yet, her emotions still not fully under control.

A second passed, and then Calli cursed silently to herself, “Damnit, Watson. I’ll… Fuck, I’ll tell you, ok? But you can’t tell anyone else, especially not Kiara, ok?”

Amelia nodded, still not trusting herself to talk yet, lest she start whimpering like a child. For all of her threatening posture, Calli really did have a glass heart, Amelia noted. It was too bad that to learn this involved her being a complete jerk about her deepest, darkest, and most horrible secret, but hey, you lose some and you win some. She followed Calli down the hall, and eventually to the reaper’s room, where she walked in just behind her.

“You feeling better?” Calli asked, going to her fridge and immediately pulling out some wine for herself.

“Y – Yeah.” She replied, her voice still a little shaky.

Amelia made her way over to the bed, not particularly caring today about ruining the immaculate stature of the room. It was fair compensation, she figured – Calli got to hurt her feelings, so in return she was allowed to sit on her bed. That was a fair enough trade, right? Calli didn’t seem to mind either, as she went over to her computer, and just dragged her chair over to her bed, where she sat down and faced Amelia. She took a drink of wine straight from the bottle, causing Amelia’s brow to rise up.

“I’m going to need it,” Calli grumbled, “I fucking hate thinking about this.”

“It’s ok, if you don’t want to.” Amelia was thankful that most of the shakiness from her voice was gone now. Her throat still felt a little raw, but thankfully she could talk normally.

Calli let out a bark of laughter, “Now? You managed to get me to finally talk, and you’re saying we can back out now?”

Ok, it was a bit ridiculous. She flushed a little in embarrassment.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” Calli took another drink of wine.

“So… Why are you avoiding Kiara so much?” Amelia asked the question she was dying to know the answer to. It may be rude, but she genuinely was curious.

Calli mulled over the question, tapping her knee to an unknown rhythm. Amelia waited, but it was kind of getting to be an awkwardly long pause. She finally spoke about a minute later, “Kiara and I have known each other for hundreds of thousands of years.” Calli revealed, “When we first met, we fell in love. She’d say it was at first sight, but really, it was a gradual thing… Not that I can really remember most of it. The passage of time wears away at the strongest of memory from even the longest living beings, and I’m not an exception to that.”

“You love Kiara?” Amelia asked in surprise.

“With all my heart.”

“Then why…?”

“When a phoenix dies, they are reborn into a new dimension. They never stay in one dimension for too long, generally just for one life cycle. Some of them can manage to stay for a handful, but eventually they will move on. Kiara is unique among them; in that she has stayed with me for tens of thousands of cycles of life and death. She’d been in our dimension on Earth for so long that she’s the only remaining phoenix to still be here. All because of her love for me.”

“Well, that’s good, right?” Amelia asked, leaning forward. She didn’t know anything about phoenix’s, and it was interesting to learn about one of her new companions.

“Not quite…” Calli absently shook her bottle of wine, listening to the sound of the drink swish around in the bottle. “It’s easy to think of a phoenix as a fire… When you rekindle a fire, it’ll be weaker than it was before, especially if you add no new logs to it. If you rekindle it again after that, it’ll be even weaker than before… If you do it again after that, it’ll be even weaker.” She let out a long sigh, “This is what happens to a phoenix… In terms of their raw strength… and more importantly, their mental fortitude.”

“So, she’s become weak, then?”

“Yes, in every way. She was a warrior that was unparalleled by anyone, but over the centuries, over the countless deaths, her skills began to degrade. And with every single death, her mind would break more and more.”

“Her mind…?”

“Kiara and I were married, well, in modern human terms, anyway.” Calli revealed, causing Amelia to gasp in surprise, “Several times over. When she was aware of her memories fading, she did everything in her power to try and make it stop, but no matter what she tried, she continued to lose them. It was the distant ones she lost first, memories of the other phoenix she used to be friends with, old enemies, and old wars we fought in. She held onto her memories of me the best, but even then, they were fading, and she’d occasionally forget our wedding, and so she’d demand that we have another one so she could maintain the memory of it, if even just for a little while. I would occasionally ask her to just accept her death and move on to a new dimension, but she’d refuse, saying that she wanted to stay here with me… I loved her for that, but it broke my heart at the same time.”

Amelia wasn’t sure what to say.

“She eventually forgot that she was forgetting anything. In a way, that was less painful. I didn’t have to watch her agonize over losing her memories and knowledge. She no longer spent years of her life trying to find ways to cure herself, and we could live happily together, just a normal life – well, as normal as a life between a phoenix and an agent of death can be anyway.”

Her melancholic smile faded just as quickly as it came.

“Unfortunately, she eventually lost all of her memories of me too, and a part of me died that day.”

She couldn’t hide her wince. Oh… That certainly explained quite a lot. She cleared her throat, “I – I’m so sorry, Calli…”

“Hm,” Calli hummed softly, meticulously swirling her bottle of wine, watching the liquid inside swish around.

Her eyes were not focused on the drink though, as far as Amelia could tell. They were far away, clouded with a melancholic haze, perhaps reliving a distant memory. She didn’t want to interrupt her thoughts, to bring her back to the present, so she stayed silent as on her bed, gathering her own thoughts. Her guilt at using her own secret to coax this out of Calli returned tenfold – retelling all of this was clearly a painful reminder of times that no matter how much she wanted, could never return.

“The first time I met her after she…” Calli begun, her voice trembled, wrought with emotion she’d been holding in for centuries. She swallowed down her bitterness though, and continued on, “When I went to meet her after her death one time, she asked me for my name. I was confused at first… Well, not confused. I knew what happened right that instant, but I was in denial. She still loved me, but she didn’t know why…”

“Calli…”

“It hurt. More than you can possibly imagine, Amelia.” Calli took another large gulp of her wine, and set the bottle aside at her desk. “After that, I rarely interacted with her other than when she died. I would come to greet her, and I’d have the task of calming her down, since occasionally she’d forget that she was capable of reviving. There were times where I talked another apprentice reaper to deal with her, it becomes too much to handle her at times… The first life where she became someone else’s partner was painful to watch.” She laughed bitterly, “I only watched distantly, but she was happy and carefree. She didn’t remember me at all in that life, she lived and died without ever knowing who I was. I was fine with that though – she was happy, and that’s enough for me.”

She clearly was lying. Amelia wasn’t sure which of them she was trying to convince.

“These last few hundred years though, something happened.” Calli murmured, “Generally when she revives, that’s that, she’ll thank me or whoever was there at the time, and move on to live her next life. The last handful of times though, she directly sought me out specifically. She didn’t know who I was, but she’d tell me that we were destined to be together, or some other such nonsense like that.”

“That’s… That’s a good thing, right?”

“Is it?” Calli asked with questioning tilt of her head, her pink hair falling over her shoulder. “I have the privilege of having her seek me out, fall in love with me, and then die, only to forget everything she did in the past life. The only constant is that she still seeks me out for some reason.” She grimaced at the thought, “I’ve started to try to be as horrible as I can to her. I berate her, push her around, and I try to make her understand that I want nothing to do with her. You guys asked me the other day why I work so much, why I avoid her…” She sighs deeply, “I love her with all my heart, but it hurts. It hurts to look at her face, and see someone who no longer remembers me. It hurts me to think that in a hundred years, or however long this life of hers is, she’ll forget everything that happened between us again, and I’ll face that painful loss yet again. I wish we could have what we once had, but I know it will never be. I work to distract myself from these thoughts, and I avoid her because of how much I love her.”

It was selfish, but Amelia felt like she could understand her. She’d never been in a similar situation – thank god – but there were times where she’d been selfish in similar ways.

“Watson…” Calli shook her head, “Amelia.”

“Yeah?”

“You’re lucky that you only have one life. I know that you might not think so – many humans don’t want to die – but let me tell you, living forever isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.” Calli stood up again, grabbing her bottle, and walked over to her fridge. Kneeling down, she put the bottle away.

“I guess.” Amelia replied dubiously. She didn’t want to argue the point however, and instead wracked her brain for something else – anything else to say, really. Saying something like ‘That’s rough buddy’ didn’t really seem very genuine, but at the same time, she didn’t want to possibly come across as patronizing either by crying, no matter how much she felt like doing just that.

“Hey Amelia,” Calli sat beside her, “You should tell the rest of your friends what you told me before.”

Amelia was quite sure her heart tried to jump out of her chest at that announcement, and she felt a little short of breath. “W – Why do you say that?”

“Life’s too short to keep secrets like that. Telling me took a lot out of you – I can tell – and I can guarantee that no one else will mind. Keeping something like this a secret for too long will make them think you don’t trust them.”

“It’s not a matter of trust,” Amelia muttered.

“Then what is it?”

Calli was clearly trying to change the subject, which she was appreciative about, but she wished it was to move it on to something else a little easier like the weather, puppies, or food. Still, Calli was expecting an answer, and she gave one, “It’s just not that important.”

“It’s not important, so that’s why you looked like you were going to have a full-blown panic attack when you told me?” Calli didn’t even need to express how unimpressed she was, the tone of voice alone told Amelia all she needed to know.

“W – Well…”

“It’ll be fine. If any of them have a problem with it, I’d eat my scythe.”

Amelia glanced to the corner of the room where the aforementioned scythe was simply leaning against the wall, and then back to Calli… Just how in the world would she fit that thing in her mouth? “I’m almost tempted to tell Gura to have a problem with that just so I’d see how you manage to eat your scythe.”

“Hey now…” Calli warningly muttered.

Amelia felt her mouth twitch into a vague shape of a smile. It wasn’t easy – not after everything she learned about Calli, but she was thankful for the little bit of levity they were able to pry out of the situation.

“Ok then…” Calli sighed, “I have some work I need to do.”

It was an abrupt dismissal, especially when Calli just stood up and strode over to her computer, and started opening up some applications. Was she planning to make music? Amelia wasn’t sure, but she felt a bit of relief in getting out now, as guilty as it made her feel. She didn’t really know how to help Calli at all, mythical creatures weren’t her area of expertise, especially one that was apparently as incredibly rare as Kiara. Would anyone know how to help her? She forced herself to stand, her legs feeling a little wobbly, and she made her way to the door.

“Bye, Calli…”

“Yeah, bye.” She didn’t even look over, her gaze intent on the screen.

Amelia left, and softly shut the door behind her, and took a few breaths trying to calm herself down. Now that she wasn’t in her presence, all of the emotions she was bottling up for Calli’s sake were starting to come out, and she could feel tears stinging the corners of her eyes. There was no way she was going to go back to see Gura and Kiara now – not when she was like this – she didn’t want either of them to question her about it.

She took a shaky step forward, and then another. Why the hell did she put her own room so far away from the rest of her generation’s rooms? Oh right, she was a scared idiot the first few weeks and wanted to stay away from them. Still, she was capable of walking, it wasn’t too far at least. When she turned down the hall leading to her own room, she heard a voice call out behind her.

“Ame?”

Amelia internally cursed, and turned around to see Gura standing there, looking concerned. “Why are you here?” She asked, her voice a little rough from emotion.

“Kiara and I were worried when you didn’t come back for a while…” She shark girl replied, “Are you ok?”

“Yeah, I’m f – fine.” Why was it when you’re not fine, if someone asks that cursed question – ‘are you ok’ – you suddenly start to get way more tearful? Amelia couldn’t hide her sniffling, but she coughed to try and get pass the lump in her throat, “I just need to get to my room.”

“Ame…” Gura whispered, “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong.”

Gura didn’t say anything, but Amelia did feel the girl’s hand on her shoulder a moment later, and she was gently turned over. She didn’t want to look at the Atlantean’s face – she knew if she did, she was going to irreversibly crack. Unfortunately, when Gura gently tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear, their eyes met. She saw the concern clear as day – and then her vision started to cloud over with tears.

“Aw fuck, Gura… Why’d you have to show up now?” She complained in a half sob, she reached up and wiped her eyes as the tears began to flow unchecked.

The Atlantean was bewildered, but immediately went into damage control mode, shushing the detective, and hugging her – an action she learned to be Gura’s default ‘I-have-no-idea-what-to-do-so-I-hope-this-works’ move. If anything, the genuine concern made Amelia cry even harder, and she held onto Gura as tightly as she could, resting her chin on the crook of her neck. She squeezed her eyes shut, and tried her best to keep her tears at bay.

She failed miserably.

Gura didn’t do more than just pat her back occasionally and whisper gentle words to her. It felt nice – a sensation she hadn’t felt in years, actually. It did wonders to help her relax, as she just focused on Gura’s voice and breath gently hitting her ear. Soon enough, the tears slowed, and she was able to breath well enough again. Her throat felt raw and sore, something she hated about crying. She just did her best to breath in and out, calming her body and mind.

“Are you feeling better now?” Gura whispered in her ear.

Amelia hummed, “Yeah…”

“Ok, good…” Gura muttered, “Is there anything I can do for you?”

Her genuine concern nearly brought tears to her eyes again, but she was thankfully able to hold them in. “Yeah…”

“What do you need?”

“I lied; you know.”

“Huh?” Gura sounded confused, and fair enough, she wasn’t really providing any context.

Amelia let go of Gura, and stood back. Gura’s hands fell to her side, and she frowned thoughtfully at the detective. Amelia took a deep breath, “About my job. What I do.”

“Start from the beginning.” Gura suggested, “You’re not making any sense to me.”

Amelia fidgeted in place, and wiped her eyes to buy a bit of time. Ugh, she hated how puffy her eyes got after crying. “Ok… I’m not really a detective.” She said as she lowered her hands to her sides. She formed two fists to stop her hands from shaking from revealing this for the second time today. “I lied about everything. I don’t know how to be a real detective. I just cheat and use my watch to catch people after they commit a crime, because I can use information about where they robbed to figure out where to stake out and catch them.”

Gura blinked a few times, “Huh.”

More fidgeting. “Don’t you have anything else to say?”

“Is there something you want me to say?” Gura asked genuinely.

“I don’t know, just… How morally bankrupt it is, and how I should feel bad for abusing my powers to become filthy rich and take the work away from people who actually have the skills I pretend to have?” She began to pace in the hallway, her whole body shaking from the adrenaline shooting through her now. Revealing this, learning Calli’s secret, and feeling so much intense emotion in so little time was starting to get to her.

“Well… You’re still doing the job, aren’t you?” Gura asked, “Just not in the way people think you are. You’re still catching bad guys, you’re still helping put them in jail, and you’re doing it by yourself…” She shrugged, “I don’t see anything wrong with it, to be honest.”

Amelia let out a choked laugh, “Y – You don’t?”

“Not really. I mean, other detectives probably don’t have time travel to help them out, so really, you’re probably more than qualified than them.” She chuckled softly, “Is this why you would freak out whenever someone brought up you being a detective?”

“Yes!” Amelia exclaimed, “I’m a fake!”

“Oh, come on, Ame.” Gura rolled her eyes, causing the fake detective to let out an annoyed huff of air, “I don’t care what you do, I don’t think anyone here does. I still like you for who you are, and it doesn’t really matter how you use your powers.”

Amelia felt her cheeks burn.

Gura’s eyes widened, “I – I like you as a friend, of course! Not like that!”

She couldn’t help but laugh as the nine-thousand-year-old started acting like a teenager again, and just like that, all of her worries washed away. “You really don’t care?”

“Nah,” Gura replied, her earlier blustering happily forgotten about since Amelia wasn’t lingering on it, “You’re still a bozo to me, no matter what you do.”

Amelia let out a relieved laugh, and wiped her eyes, trying to dry the tears springing up again. It felt really good to have someone know and not care… Two people, actually. Calli and Gura were both aware, and neither really cared. She suspected that Kiara and Ina would feel the same, and suddenly, all of her early worries about it just felt silly and inconsequential.

“Is that why you were crying earlier?” Gura asked, looking back the way Amelia came from, “Wait… Did you tell Calli, and she yelled at you about it?!”

The shark girl began to bristle at the thought, her teeth clenched together, and her eyes narrowed dangerously, turning an almost frightening black shade – just like a shark about to take a bite out of their prey.

“No!” Amelia cried, “No! Calli took it a lot like you did… She just… Told me something else.”

“Yeah?” Gura didn’t calm down immediately, her shoulders were still tense, but at least she didn’t look like she was going to go run to Calli’s room anymore and demand and explanation.

“Yeah,” Amelia nodded, “Seriously, it’s fine.”

She reached out, and gently pet Gura’s head, the Atlantean blinked a few times, her eyes turning back to their usual blue hue. She closed her eyes, and Amelia swore she started to purr at her touch. What was even more noticeable was that Gura’s tail started to wag, almost like a dog. “Then why were you crying?”

“It’s not something I can talk about, I’m sorry.”

Gura frowned, and it became more prominent when Amelia lowered her hand back to her side, done patting the shark girl’s head. “It’s about Calli, then?” Amelia didn’t say anything, but something she did must have given it away. Since the shark’s gaze softened, and she gave a curt nod, “Alright, I won’t pry then. Now come on…” She grabbed Amelia’s hand, and started walking down the hall the opposite way of her room.

“Where are we going?”

“Back to watching TV.”

“Is Kiara still there?”

“She’s actually the one who asked me to come find you,” Gura revealed, turning down the corner, “She wanted to go herself, but was afraid that she would interrupt your talk with Calli.”

As peppy as she acted, the phoenix was definitely pretty perceptive when she wanted to be. Granted, it didn’t take a genius to see how Calli reacted around Kiara. Still, just thinking of Kiara after what she learned made her heart clench painfully in her chest.

“Ame?” Gura asked, and she realized she must have let some of her sadness show on her face.

“It’s fine.” Amelia replied, following Gura the rest of the way to the rec room.

“There you are!” Kiara exclaimed, “Where we you?”

“Ah, just… Somewhere.” She helplessly shrugged.

The phoenix sensed immediately that something was up, and she jumped to her feet and rushed over to Amelia. The faux-detective blinked in surprise at the girl’s speed, and was even more caught off guard at the pure concern in her gaze, “Are you ok? Did Calli do something to upset you?”

“No, no, nothing like that!” Amelia insisted quickly.

Kiara frowned, completely unconvinced, but she let it go, and with a huff she guided Amelia and Gura to the couch, where they all sat down again.

The rest of the evening was actually very nice, even if it made Amelia felt like a little kid. Kiara was constantly doting on her, constantly talking to her about the shows they were watching and other things. All the while, the phoenix body heat was a nice balm to her stress, and she gently leaned into her. Gura in the meantime was quieter, but added her two cents every once in a while, and she was just leaning in on her other side, her hand still holding Amelia’s, never letting go.

After a while, her conversations started to slow, and she closed her eyes, just wanting to relax for a little bit…

… Sleeping was entirely accidental, but not unwelcomed, after such a tiring day. Gura passed out shortly after her, leaving just the phoenix to watch over them fondly. She looked back to the television, and decided to just turn it off now, when she went to get up, Amelia’s grip on her shirt tightened, and she let out a small huff of a laugh.

“If only Calli was as honest as you,” She muttered, and she obliged and stayed put next to the sleeping girl.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SHOW DON'T TELL. I know! I know!!!!!! I was actually going to have flashbacks to Calli's life of her time with Kiara, instead of her just telling Amelia everything, but I just couldn't get into it, so I'm sorry about that.
> 
> I wrote in my first chapter's end notes how this was going to be a happy story with no drama, but uh... Yeah, sorry about that too. I guess I'm a liar. Thing is though, to get to the good parts where everyone's happy together, you need to have them overcome conflict, it makes it all the sweeter in the end.
> 
> I also know a lot of you were probably coming expecting to read PolyMyth stuff, and I'm sorry, but that's still pretty far off. I did put in the 'eventual romance' tag for a reason, however. Sorry if you expected it to come in a lot sooner though. 
> 
> Those of you who stuck around, thank you, and I'll see you in the next chapter!


End file.
